The Dyer's Garden

by Rita Buchanan

Touching on the history and nature of dye plants, this comprehensive guide walks readers through a garden season from design to planting to harvesting for the dyepot, discussing 18 dye plants in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1883010071
• ISBN13: 9781883010072
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Interweave Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.6" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Even if you don't garden, this book is great!

This book is amazing. It covers everthing you need to know about dye plants and how to grow and use them. The book has a whole section of full color examples of the different plant based dyes used on different fibers with different mordants, clearly showing the differences in color between the mordants and the fibers. For that alone I would consider the book worth twice the price. Combined with the cultivation information, and the detailed information about each plant, the book is indispensible to those interested in natural dyes. I highly recommend both this book and her other book "The Weavers Garden" to anyone interested in spinning, weaving, dyeing, plants, historic re-enactors, or costume or textile historians.

Beautiful, well-organized guide to dye plants

This book focuses mainly on the home growing and use of dye plants. There is even a section devoted to the layout of the home dye garden. General mordanting and dye bath info is given at the beginning of the book. In the "Portfolio of Dye Plants" which follows, two pages are devoted to each dye plant. For each plant, 4-10 color photos illustrate the results obtained with various mordants on different fibers. The instructions for using different plants are not in traditional recipe form. Instead, Buchanan indicates how much plant material is generally required for a given amount of fiber ("flowers from 8 plants," etc). This fits in with Buchanan's emphasis on diversity of color over reproducibility, but it could be troublesome for users of purchased dyestuffs. In short, this book is nice to look at, easy to use, and appears to contain highly useful information for dyer/gardeners.

Woad-you like to grow your own dye plants? Read on

For those doing creative re-enactment (SCA, Renn faires), this is an essential reference for growing and using natural dye plants. The book includes plants to grow, plants NOT to grow (invasive species), and plants that pay off with dye materials in one season. The margins of the book are organized by color family, and there are lovely schematics on how to organize a dye-plant garden for production or for high-intensity cultivation with raised rows--or just a pretty border. There are some basics of plant dyeing, information on mordants (salts that change color or cause it to stick to fiber.) A small but potent book, probably a must for anyone doing authentic reproduction of antique fibers or for anyone who likes the idea of home-dyed fiber but with naturally-obtained materials. Great for home schooling. Highly recommended.

Terrific -- and "For Real"

Beautifully researched, solid data, and great color illustrations and presentation AND amazingly enough, her information is ACCURATE. No theoretical blather based on other references or wishful thinking. She has clearly tested, cross-checked, and validated all of her information first-hand. That in itself is remarkable, greatly appreciated, enormously valuable. Thank you Ms. Buchanan!

Best book around for plant dyes

Rita gives CLEAR instructions on WHAT part of the plant to harvest for which color; which mordants and which fibers produce which colors; and what time of the year to harvest the plant. In addition, her color photos of the color outcome are neatly stacked along the right edge, enabling the reader to flip through the book to see the colors. There is also an appendix listing where the reader can get seeds for the plants in the book. Anyone interested in trying GOOD dye plants (almost any plant will give you at least tan) should have this small, well-written and beautifully illustrated book. Rita is one of the best.