Solar Dyeing: Try a New Dye Method for Your Plant Fiber

As spring arrives and new green leaves begin to pop out on the trees, flowers are poking their heads out of the ground and the sun starts rising earlier each morning. What a wonderful time to be outdoors among spring plants while solar dyeing plant fibers for spinning. Add water, reagents, and fiber or yarn to a jar and set it in the sun. Then it’s time to go in and have a nice breakfast while the sun does the work for you.

One of the most rewarding solar-dyeing experiences began one day last spring as I was spinning with a couple of friends on a neighbor’s patio, sitting six feet apart. Lynn handed me several skeins of handspun cotton yarn. Someone had given the yarn to her several years before; it was definitely a beginner’s attempt to spin cotton, but the yarn was stable. After I insisted several times that Lynn keep the yarn, she said she needed someone to adopt the yarn who would put it to good use. Appreciating the effort and frustration that must have gone into making that yarn, I knew I had to create something from it. It was lumpy and bumpy and tied with knots in many places. The yarn was spun from several different batches of cotton, and each skein was a different white color.

I held back the whitest skein to use as accent and added two skeins to a green dyebath. Sitting in our Arizona sun, it took only two hours to give me a nice warm green, but due to the different types of cotton, I got two different shades of green. The third skein I submerged into the same jar with the leftover dye. The next morning, this last skein was yet another shade of green. I wet-finished the yarn and waited until it was fully dry before heading to my weaving room. I was so pleased with the result that I quickly wove off a lovely scarf.

The nice thing about this solar-dyeing method for plant fibers is that it does not have to be a technical or scientific project. The following instructions can be tinkered with; they are a basic recipe that you can add to or subtract from. This approach is not for professional dyers who want to get precision-dyed fiber consistently. No, it is for those of us who want to have fun and play with colors.

Joan was able to dye several spring greens on cotton with a little work and a little love. Photo by Matt Graves

The Dyes

For years, I used dyes that required sodium carbonate, a lot of salt, and many gallons of rinse water to create colorful plant fibers and yarns that would not bleed. Living in Arizona where water is precious, it always bothered me to waste so much water.

When Sara at Red Stone Glen in Pennsylvania asked me to teach a workshop, she also asked if I would teach students to use the dyes they carry made by W. Cushing & Co. “But that’s a union dye,”* I said. Sara corrected me, explaining that Cushing had a direct dye for cellulose fibers and an acid dye for protein fibers, and she sent me a couple jars of direct dye to try. To my amazement, the dye process was easy and only took a little salt in addition to the dye, and when I rinsed the dyed fiber, it didn’t bleed! I was sold and have used only Cushing’s Direct Dyes ever since for my plant fibers and yarns.

As with any type of dye, you discover shortcuts, recipes, and tolerances through experience and practice. I share my method here for solar dyeing.

Getting Started

First, you will need to gather some equipment and prepare your plant fibers and yarns. Cotton must be scoured in order to dye consistently as it has oil and waxes that protect the fiber. This protective layer inhibits dye absorption, but it can be removed by simmering the cotton in water with a little detergent, such as Dawn. Hemp, flax, and most other plant fibers do not need to be scoured before dyeing because their fiber was previously protected by parts of the plant