Welcome

An August 2024 natural dyeing workshop in Tangier offered a challenge. Host and international textile artist Yto Barrada proposed the best way to really understand a dye source or a color is to spend a lot of time pushing its boundaries.

A lot of time: At least one month with one type of flower or other dye source. Working with only that color day after day. Longer to really see how far a natural color can go. 

I took this challenge to heart and launched what I am calling my Yellow Project, spending at least a year working with natural sources for yellow dyes from locations all over the world. 

Yellow is often the easiest color to achieve and can be coaxed from innumerable natural sources: flowers, leaves, barks, dirt and rocks.

Northern Europe’s weld plant has been used for millennia to produce a bright yellow. Marigold and coreopsis are the novice dyers friends for their ease of use. The green and white leaves of the silver poplar tree nonsensically produce a taxi-bright shade of yellow. Fustic from Argentina was used for the khaki shade of World War I military uniforms.

And yellow is a versatile color easily adjusted and changed by water pH, growing location, quantity of dye source, whether it’s fresh, dried or frozen, heat, time, mordants, additives and after-dye baths.

I started this project with three varieties of coreopsis growing in abundance in my back yard. I’ve stretched their dye from bright orange to a pale greenish yellow.

I’ve filled half of a large journal with notes and swatches and I think I still have months ahead of me just working with coreopsis.

Then I’ll move on to marigold, which also flourishes in my yard and dries or freezes well. Then whatever yellow color source I find wherever my travels take me.

It will all be documented here with photos, videos and updates on what I learn. I’ll add to this page regularly, so please return to see where the Yellow Project takes me.

-- September 2024