For World Water Day, 12 Ways to Natural Dye & Protect Land & Water

For World Water Day on March 22, 2024, we wanted to shine a light on 12 ways to natural dye and protect our water. As natural dyers, we have so many ways we can tackle these issues from collecting and reusing water creatively to simply stopping using hazardous pesticides as we grow our beautiful dye plants.This year’s theme of World Water Day 2024 is ‘Water for Peace.’ From the World Water Day 2024 site: “When we cooperate on water, we create a positive ripple effect – fostering harmony, generating prosperity and building resilience to shared challenges. We must act upon … Read more

Video For FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Tannin Dyeing With Sari Monroy Solis

Last week we had a special presentation of FEEDBACK FRIDAY, this time with Sari Monroy Solis. Sari is a Mayan Kaqchikel backstrap weaver,natural dyer, and fiber enthusiast. Sari will be zooming in live from Guatemala and will be doing natural dyeing with local coffee fruits and other foraged tannins. She has been practicing tannin dyeing with foraged materials in Coastal California and is excited to share a little about the work she does with her elders in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala. Watch the recording below. Sari’s Instagram @theblueweaver What is she excited about right now? “One, sharing my weaving … Read more

MORDANT MONDAY: Post-Mordanting With Iron + Preferred Method For Protein

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 recently purchased Ceriops Tagal Liquid Dye and have used it once already, I love it!! I am looking at your site and it says post-mordanting with iron to alter the color but I can’t seem to find what color it will produce. Does it result in a darker almost black shade like walnut would?  KATHY ANSWERED: Ceriops creates a very dark chocolate shade when immersed in an iron rich mud solution (check out this link from Threads of … Read more

RSVP: LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY With Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori

Join us September 11th, 9am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern for a live Zoom FEEDBACK FRIDAY with Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori. We are going old school this week with Kathy answering all the natural dye/mordant/process questions we can get to. Send your questions ahead of time to me (Amy) at [email protected]. RSVP for FEEDBACK FRIDAY with Kathy Hattori HERE. What Botanical Colors Does: The way that conventional color is applied to clothes is broken. “Wet processing” as industrial dyeing is called, is one of the top polluters in the world, consuming enormous amounts of energy, water and petrochemical based colorants. … Read more

Construction Techniques with Aboubakar Fofana: Create a Pair of Stripcloth Trousers

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Indigo Master Dyer Aboubakar Fofana

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with indigo master dyer and multidisciplinary artist Aboubakar Fofana. Aboubakar is based in Mali and France and updated us on his latest projects including cotton cultivation in Mali. He also talked about his indigo farm, exhibits and the workshops he is teaching with Botanical Colors this spring and summer. Watch the video recording here: Shop the Finimugu (Malian Strip Cloth) Aboubakar talked about and showed us beautiful images of here. If you don’t know indigo master dyer Aboubakar Fofana, he is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose working mediums include calligraphy, textiles and natural dyes. … Read more

For World Water Day, 10 Ways to Natural Dye & Protect Land & Water

For World Water Day on March 22, 2023, we wanted to shine a light on two things very important to us: keeping carbon in the soil and protecting our water. As natural dyers, we have so many ways we can tackle these issues from collecting and reusing water creatively to simply stopping using hazardous pesticides as we grow our beautiful dye plants. We hope our pointing you towards World Water Day 2023 can offer easy that ways you can be part. This World Water Day is about accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis. And because water affects … Read more

Recipe! Food Waste, Indigo and Natural Dyeing With Cara Piazza

This past Saturday I taught a natural dye workshop in the backyard of my friend’s Cyd and Neal’s vintage store – The Grand Street Bakery. A vintage store set in a converted old bakery, fully equipped with awesome vintage threads hanging on repurposed baking racks, stocked with natural apothecary, magazines and generally some of the best vintage buys you can find in New York. They also have an incredible backyard space so I thought a food waste workshop in a converted bakery with vintage oasis? Perfect. Working with donations from Reynard at the Wythe Hotel, and juice pulp from the … Read more

Gamma Folk’s Lily Piyathaisere on Natural Dyes, Boy Scouts and Brooklyn

We always love seeing how Botanical Colors can be applied to so many different mediums through the hands of talented artists. Brooklyn-based Lily Piyathaisere of Gamma Folk is new to our natural dye family and we are pretty crazy about her jewelry. Lily says her vision is to “combine traditional techniques with thoughtful, statement jewelry. Influenced by folk art, mysticism, pop culture and the bauhaus, Gamma Folk is a celebration of aesthetics, experiments in technique and the preservation of craft.

” All pieces are made by hand in Brooklyn, New York. We caught up with her recently to see what got … Read more