Organic Indigo from Living Blue - Botanical Colors
Organic Indigo from Living Blue is a special indigo produced in rural Bangladesh by the Living Blue cooperative, specializing in farming and crafts.| Botanical Colors
Organic Indigo from Living Blue is a special indigo produced in rural Bangladesh by the Living Blue cooperative, specializing in farming and crafts.| Botanical Colors
Our organic indigo is 45-48% indigotin which is 2 to 3 times stronger than other indigo on the market. So you will produce deep colors with fewer dips.| Botanical Colors
Madder extract dyes to its deepest colors with an alum mordant and calcium carbonate. Add a mild acid to your dyebath to create a soft orange shade.| Botanical Colors
This Mordant Monday, I want to share a little bit about my pokeberry dye adventure this past week. Those of you who know me know that I was trained to mordant nearly everything (exception: indigo). Not mordanting something that needs a mordant usually elicits a shocked, silent, but oh-so-judgey raised eyebrow, so this post is a stretch for me. The interesting thing about pokeberries is that it’s possible to get a brilliant color by using wool yarn and white vinegar. No alum mordant is used ...| Botanical Colors
On this Sunday Visit, we’re honored to sit down with Harvest & Mill, pioneers in regeneratively grown, U.S.-made organic clothing whose work invites us to slow down and recalibrate our relationship with the land and our wardrobes. As ever, we approach this dialogue in reverence for our continued collaboration—one that roots deeply in shared values of local making, true sustainability, and a belief that changing fashion means changing systems, stitch by stitch. Their story is one of vision...| Botanical Colors
This week on the Sunday Visit, we are honored to welcome artist Nnenna Okore, whose work bridges ecology, materiality, and community practice through powerful sculptural installations and tactile explorations of the natural world. Working with biodegradable substances and fibers, Nnenna brings attention to cycles of transformation, decay, and renewal, echoing both the fragility and resilience of our ecosystems. Her artistic journey, deeply rooted in cultural traditions and...| Botanical Colors
We have been working with the 1-2-3 indigo vat for nearly 10 years and over time made some adjustments to the original recipe.| Botanical Colors
Botanical Colors provides natural dyes to natural dyers and fashion brands that are sustainable, environmentally friendly and support farming communities.| Botanical Colors
TANNIN A TIMELESS MORDANT Tannins are a bitter and astringent compound found so abundantly in many plants. In food, they serve as the slight pucker in black coffee and tea, and the “oaky” flavor in aged wines. Tannins are used in medicine and for leather tanning. For us, they are the natural dyer’s not-so-secret-weapon to beautiful color. For the natural colorist, tannins provide a rich base for unusual and eye-catching combinations, and they’re particularly effective on plant fib...| Botanical Colors
Organic Henna Powder| Botanical Colors
We get mordant questions all the time at Botanical Colors so why not create Mordant Monday??? Got mordanting questions? Email questions@botanicalcolors.com YOU ASKED: I am working with earth pigments specifically clay. I am trying to wrap my head around the use of soy as a binder/mordant. Is a coating of soy necessary as an initial application? Then using pigment. Mixed with soy as design than a coating of soy over the whole dried material? Or what?? KATHY ANSWERED: Soy is used as a binder, a...| Botanical Colors
We get mordant questions all the time at Botanical Colors so why not create Mordant Monday??? Email questions@botanicalcolors.com| Botanical Colors
The Art and Science of Natural Dyes: Principles, Experiments, and Resultsis a comprehensive guide that explains the general principles of natural dyeing.| Botanical Colors
We originally used a recipe based on Michel Garcia's 1-2-3 vat but have made some changes to control how light or dark your vat is.| Botanical Colors
These three, easy shibori techniques work best with indigo, but can be used with other natural dyes as well.| Botanical Colors
Looking to learn how to work with natural dyes? Our Botanical Colors How To's list covers everything you need to know.| Botanical Colors
Kakishibu Liquid is a full strength solution of the tannin-rich persimmon Diospyros kaki. It is an important color in the Japanese palette and is used as| Botanical Colors
Our How To guides are intended to make the dye process easy for our customers, from mordanting and to how to scour your fibers.| Botanical Colors
Kakishibu samples clockwise from top: paste resist by Kentaro Kojima, silk, cotton sashiko thread, cotton with iron, soda ash and kakishibu alone. Natural dyes are fascinating because we can see the history of human curiosity and imagination as it interacts with the natural world. Like, who looked at a hard, green, horribly astringent, inedible persimmon fruit and thought “You know, there’s probably an amazing, insect-repelling, anti-microbial, water-resistant, beautiful color in there if...| Botanical Colors
We get mordant questions all the time at Botanical Colors so why not create Mordant Monday??? Got mordanting questions? Email questions@botanicalcolors.com YOU ASKED: I’m wondering if its possible to reuse a tannin bath, perhaps by using half as much tannin powder the second time as one can do when re using a mordant bath? Recently I have made a tannin bath for linen and have lots left over, it would be great not to throw it out! Secondly, I usually rinse the fabric after mordanting and bef...| Botanical Colors
Thank you to Rachel MacHenry and Gitte Hansen of Contemporary Textile Studio Co-operative for the lovely photos! I taught a one day workshop on middle mordant using Japanese dyes in Toronto on Friday, and had a great time with the students. This was the first time we’d tried the technique using only Japanese dyes that we extracted, and we also had a side trip into kakishibu which didn’t require any mordant, but made a beautiful shade. I’ve written about middle mordanting before: Cathari...| Botanical Colors
In this edition of Botanical Colors’ Sunday Visit series, we sit down with Victoria Manganiello, the innovative textile artist and co-founder of Craftwork, whose work blurs the boundaries between ancient weaving traditions and cutting-edge technology. From her early days experimenting with knitting and macramé to her current projects that fuse natural dyes, fiber optics, and computer programming, Manganiello’s practice is a testament to the power of collaboration, curiosity, and storytel...| Botanical Colors
A 1-2-3 indigo iron vat will give you a cool blue-gray color. It is a good choice for dark blue shades when making an indigo vat.| Botanical Colors
The fructose indigo vat is one of the easiest indigo vats to set up and gives good color. I've found that it benefits from a few days aging| Botanical Colors
We get mordant questions all the time at Botanical Colors so why not create Mordant Monday??? Got mordanting questions? Email questions@botanicalcolors.com YOU ASKED: Do you always dye indigo first before overdyeing with another color? Does it make any difference? KATHY ANSWERED: When I was starting out, I was advised to dye with indigo first, rinse, mordant my fabric, and then dye with a mordant color second in order to create any type of compound color when indigo is involved. We largely ag...| Botanical Colors
The 1-2-3 fructose indigo vat is one of our most popular vats for its ease of use and good, strong colors. Our kit comes pre-measured to make a vat.| Botanical Colors
A beautiful indigo paste from Oregon's Vibrant Valley Blue. This historical color comes from Japanese indigo, or Persicaria tinctoria.| Botanical Colors
