Dyeing.With.Wild.Plants.Breckinridge.HISTORY-OtherFrom: KyArchives 
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Subject: Dyeing.With.Wild.Plants.Breckinridge.HISTORY-Other


Dyeing With Wild Plants  
Breckinridge County KyArchives History Other 
Book Title: A Glimpse Of The Past 
Back many years ago when store bought dyes were scarece, often the natural 
shades of wool were used for material. However, when people did start dyeing 
wool different colors, usually their only sources for dyes were plants, which 
were boiled down in iron pots.  After the plants were boild down, the material 
or thread was added to the dye solution. 
People often mixed mordants with dye to set or fix colors and keep them from 
fading.  Vinegar and salt were used quite frequently as mordants when dyeing 
with plants.  Cooperas, a green sulfate of iron, and alum, a white mineral 
salt, were also successful mordants for dyeing cloth.  Acetic acid was used as 
a mordant to color red and potassium bichromate to color yellow. 
Walnut hulls, roots and bark were commonly used as a natural dye to produce 
shades of brown and black. 
The hulls, roots or bark along with the material was added to boiling water.  
It was then boiled until desired color was reached. 
For a rose colored beige, madder root was added. 
Grey moss from an oak or apple tree was added to water and boiled for about an 
hour for varied colors of yellow and a light brown. 
Wild broomstraw would also produce orange or yellow. 
Dye weed and coreopis blooms, yellow roots, black hickory bark and oak barks 
all made yellow dye.  Yellow root boiled down also fades out to a soft green. 
Colors from rose pink to red were obtained from ground madder root. 
The colors of red to a maroon could be had from pokeberries.  One gallon of 
berries to ten gallon of water was used.  Blackberries, grapes or any other 
berries would yield various other shades of red.  Red clay will also make a 
deep orangeish-red. 
Pokeberry roots made a deep purple. 
To make green, green oak leaves were boiled with the material for one to one 
and one half-hours. 
Submitted by: Dana Brown 
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00005.html#0001067 



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