Natural Color
Vibrant Plant Dye Projects for Your Home and Wardrobe
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A beautiful book of seasonal projects for using the brilliant spectrum of colors derived from plants to naturally dye your clothing and home textiles.
Organized by season, Natural Color is a beautifully photographed guide to the full range of plant dyes available, drawn from commonly found fruits, flowers, trees, and herbs, with accompanying projects. Using sustainable methods and artisinal techniques, designer, artist, and professor Sasha Duerr details achievable ways to apply these limitless color possibilities to your home and wardrobe. Whether you are new to dyeing or more practiced, Duerr's clear and simple ingredients lists, step-by-step instructions, and detailed breakouts on techniques such as shibori, dip-dye, and block printing will ensure beautiful results. With recipes to dye everything from dresses and sweaters to rugs and napkins, Natural Color will inspire fashion enthusiasts, home decorators, textile lovers, and everyone else who wants to bring more color into their life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Duerr, a professor at California College of the Arts as well as a designer known for her work with organic dyes, shares tips for mixing pigments to produce "plant-based palettes" for clothing and home textiles. Duerr teaches dye projects hat, blanket, curtain, bag organized by season, as knowing what plants are in season matters when one is foraging from the wild. Spring produces avocado pit pillows. Summer's palette includes oxalis, nettles, and roses; fall presents a madder-dyed scarf. Winter's red cabbage dyes baby mittens. Duerr likens producing dyes from natural color to cooking: both involve finding just the right ingredients, fiddling around, and having good timing. She warns that setting up a studio for dyeing requires attention to safety, as the process involves high heat and irritants from plants and mordants (fixers). Along the way, Duerr persuasively advocates for buying clothing made by local artisans using sustainable methods. She is at the forefront of the "slow fashion" movement, from which readers can expect to see many future books.
