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The Latest from our blog

Mordant Monday: Myrobalan Magic

October 27, 2025October 27, 2025

Sunday Visit: The Incredible Amy Dufault

October 26, 2025October 26, 2025

Sunday Visit: William Ingram and Jean Howe of Threads of Life Bali

October 19, 2025October 19, 2025

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October 19th, 2025 – Eco-Printing Deep Dive with Monica Medeiros of Brico Press

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botanicalcolors

Ancient dyes for modern times. Your resource for natural dyes, education and natural dye production.

Mordant Monday! Mad For Myrobalan Magic – Make a M

Mordant Monday! Mad For Myrobalan Magic - Make a Myro rainbow.

This week’s tannin exploration focuses on Myrobalan. I changed it up a bit this week by using our mordanted cotton bandana 6-pack as the base for exploring myrobalan. The convenience was a pleasant surprise and the colors came out beautiful. Myrobalan is a traditional cellulose tannin pre-treatment and dye, and used in Ayurvedic and traditional medicine. It’s an important color and used frequently in India and Southeast Asia.

Myrobalan imparts a light yellow on cotton with a subtle light brown undertone, making it an ideal foundation for color overdyeing, and indigo combinations. Like our other examples, when combined with other colors you can get exciting mixes and beautiful color blends that harmonize and are perfect for patchwork, creating gradations and stitching.

Skill level: Good for an intermediate dyer. You should be familiar with cellulose mordanting (or get the 6-pack and jump right in), dyeing with natural dye extracts, and indigo dipping and overdyes.

The inspiration for using Myrobalan comes from Sara Buscaglia of Ancient Futures Farm @farmandfolk and author of the book Farm & Folk Quilt Alchemy (In her book, Sara beautifully articulated some ideas that I’d been mulling over and when I saw the results she achieved, I knew we should dive in and start testing colors. It’s been a lot of fun! Sara mentions that she uses Myrobalan with indigo for her Sage color. I was trying for a similar effect, but achieved slightly different results as the myrobalan I used created a darker gold than what Sara gets. I think that’s a lot of the fun of creating gradations: each dyer will achieve a slightly different result.

I used Myrobalan, Indigo and Lac for the color gradations. Head to our website to read the whole post!

SUNDAY VISIT: We missed Amy so much at Botanical

SUNDAY VISIT: We missed Amy so much at Botanical Colors, so much we needed to have her back on our Interview series that she started. For those who don't know the amazing @amytropolis, she is a storyteller, writer, and consultant passionate about bioregionalism, textiles and protecting water.

She brings together diverse perspectives that drive innovative environmental solutions. Her work sheds light on the challenges facing the textile industry but also the successes pioneered by designers, artisans, filmmakers, scientists and futurists committed to a more sustainable and equitable future.

Read the whole interview on our website, and watch her recent Community Y.A.K.A. on YouTube!

AN EXCERPT FROM THE INTERVIEW
Can you share some of the biggest challenges and successes you’ve encountered while building a regional fiber supply chain?

It’s REALLY hard to sell the idea of clothing grown, sewn and manufactured within a small region at the price point it will retail at. What we are talking about with most fibershed-made clothing is truly luxury. What’s great about all the 75+ fibersheds worldwide, is that they are, as I am, offering a local supply chain that might offer yarn to make that amazing sweater, fabric to make a beautiful dress, or dye plants you can purchase to dye your own clothes.

While that has been really exciting to me for years, I’ve gone back to the farmer to better understand why they still struggle and in the case of sheep farmers, why there’s such an incredible amount of wool waste. I’ve just wrapped up a Northeast Wool Pilot Study grant that was year 4 of my focus on wool waste and interestingly enough, it all comes back to supporting the farmer in a new way, by finding new products to make with the wasted wool.

So I’ve had a huge shift from focusing on clothing to building materials. It feels way more exciting to me and really broadens the conversation beyond our lovely fibershed choir.

Photo by @paigegreenphoto ! 💕

Join us this Friday, October 24th from 12-1EST for

Join us this Friday, October 24th from 12-1EST for a presentation with Amy DuFault! Amy worked with us at Botanical Colors for 11 years running communications and FEEDBACK FRIDAY and we can't wait to get the band back together again.

Amy will be talking about the work she's been doing since she left two years ago including waste wool studies in the Northeast and wastewater work on Cape Cod. While waste is her jam, natural dyes and textiles always come into play. Come and learn, say hi and have some laughs.

The link is in our bio to sign up!

We are returning to Bali and Sumba for an amazing

We are returning to Bali and Sumba for an amazing journey of textiles, color and culture with @threadsoflifebali! Join us for an info session on our upcoming excursion to Bali and Sumba in May 2026. Tomorrow (Wednesday October 22) at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern Registration link via Zoom is here https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PNNVsvVNRkubmCxc2AuyTg

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