water Archives - Botanical Colors

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

Sunday Visit: Dye Experiments With Madeleine McGarrity of Cold N’ Deadly

For this week’s Sunday Visit, we catch up with textile artist, researcher, and natural dyer, Madeleine McGarrity of Cold N’ Deadly. Madeleine McGarrity is a designer, textile researcher, and professional printmaker currently living and working in Providence, RI. She grew up in rural Northwest New Jersey, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Printmaking in 2010, and worked as a teacher and professional textile printer in Brooklyn, NY from 2012 to 2020. In 2019, she started Cold and Deadly, a project investigating the development of a modern system for textile printing with natural dyes. She is … Read more

dried weld flowers and stalks in a white bowl

You Asked, Kathy Answered: Bright Yellow From Weld

We get lots of emails from customers about challenges with dyeing and needing Botanical Colors’ President Kathy Hattori’s help. Why not share the learning so we can all benefit? From our inboxes to you, it’s simple: You Asked, Kathy Answered. Email [email protected] with your plea for help! YOU ASKED: I am dyeing with dried weld and would like to obtain the most bright yellow, so was wondering if I can use soda ash at 1% weight of fiber (wof) instead of calcium carbonate? Or will this give a big difference as both are elevating the pH level of the water? … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Water, Sediment & Color With Minnesota Fiber Artist Moira Bateman

For our first FEEDBACK FRIDAY of 2023, we welcomed Minneapolis-based fiber and textile artist, Moira Bateman. Moira guided us through a beautiful presentation of her work and a deep look at water, sediment and color. Watch the recording below. Follow Moira here: Website Instagram Ecoartspace article Her exhibits that launch on January 5th and another on January 17th Artist’s Biography: Moira Bateman creates assemblages from waxed silk, dyed with tannins and waterway sediments. Her chosen fabrics are soaked for days, months, and even years in the waters, mud, and sediments of rivers, lakes, and bogs of Minnesota. Past collaborative projects … 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

FEEDBACK FRIDAY: This Week in Natural Dye Questions

Each week, we are emailed with questions from our natural dye community asking simple and complex questions that we thought might be worth sharing. Here are a handful from this week answered by natural dyer in chief, Kathy Hattori, Founder of Botanical Colors: I’ve always used my tap water to dye but have just started using rain barrels to collect water I will use for dyeing-can you tell me what differences you have found in using different types of water? Water is a significant factor in natural dye results. Water that is highly mineralized with calcium, magnesium and/or iron will … Read more

Tips For Using Less Water & Energy to Get Color

Here are some simple tips to help you use less water and energy to get the colors you want: 1. Try some of the innovative dye techniques as practiced by India Flint and Kimberly Baxter Packwood. Both these artists create using low-water and low resource methods that yield surprising and very beautiful results. Each has developed her method of eco-dyeing using windfall and waste materials and the pieces they produce are evocative of the spirit of a leaf or the wild meanderings of decomposing plant matter. 2. Take up fabric or yarn painting with natural dyes. You use less water … Read more