Botanical Colors

Mordant Monday: Easy mordanting for wool

Even as the weather cools and the days get shorter, we are still in the dye pots and love the ease of aluminum triformate for mordanting wool. Aluminum triformate is another alum mordant, and we’ve adapted a couple of recipes to create a mordant method that’s a little different than our standard hot water techniques. Very simply, we create a mordant container or bucket and mix the aluminum triformate mordant with cold water. We then use that bucket and add skeins of clean wool yarn to it and let it soak overnight or longer. Then, when we’re ready to use … Read more

Mordant Monday: Myrobalan Magic

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 … Read more

Sunday Visit: The Incredible Amy Dufault

Amy we miss you so at Botanical Colors, so much we needed to have you back on our Interview series that you started. We would love to catch up with you and tell everyone what amazing projects you have been working on. So here goes it! Amy 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 … Read more

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

A little backstory from Kathy: I’ve known Jean and William for many years through their trunk shows held in Seattle, where they’d speak about their cultural and natural dye projects in Bali as well as bring an array of incredible traditional textiles to view and purchase. From the beginning, I was impressed how they always put the weavers and communities front and center to their work. The quality and breadth of the textiles is exceptional, and the Seattle Art Museum acquired a dozen pieces for the Ikat exhibition in 2023. We’re honored and excited to work with them for this … Read more

Mordant Monday: Chalk and Madder Experiment

I just finished teaching A Nerd’s Guide to Mordants online this past weekend where we discussed the idea of adding minerals to the dye bath to develop deeper color. This is a technique that we’ve used in the PNW as our water is not very highly mineralized. Now many of the water sources in the United States are from groundwater sources that contain minerals like calcium and magnesium, and sometimes iron, so it’s easy to get rich reds from madder extract with little effort. However in Seattle, the water source is from snowpack and not from groundwater, so it’s somewhat … Read more

Mordant Monday: Pokeberry dyeing without a mordant

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 in this technique. And vinegar is not normally considered a mordant. So here we are. … Read more

Sunday Visit: In Conversation with Harvest & Mill

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, resilience, and interconnectedness, unraveling the quiet strength behind ethical practice and homegrown materials. Today, we listen and learn from a team shaping … Read more

Sunday Visit: Nnenna Okore

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 environmental consciousness, invites us to consider not only the beauty of organic matter but also our responsibility to the earth. What first sparked your interest in working with biodegradable and natural materials like bioplastics, cheesecloth, and fibers in your sculpture and installation work? From the early stages of my career, I’ve been deeply concerned about the levels of waste production … Read more

Mordant Monday: Tannin Extravaganza!

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 fibers such as cotton and linen. We have two back to back tannin workshops for you coming up in January! Build your swatch … Read more

MORDANT MONDAY: Is Soy Milk a Mordant?

We get mordant questions all the time at Botanical Colors so why not create Mordant Monday??? Got mordanting questions? Email [email protected] 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 “glue” really, to attach clay and earth pigments to a fabric surface. It is not … Read more