Dirt-Dyed and Plant-Dyed Garden Apron

For this apron, embrace the unpredictability of natural dyes and try your hand at dyeing the yarns you weave, crochet, and stitch using mud and plant materials. Use a pin loom and the mud-dyed yarns to weave the body of the apron, and then crochet the squares together and add straps using those same yarns. Turn next to your plant-dyed yarns to add the whimsical Swedish huck embroidery.

Jennifer took this issue’s theme “New Beginnings” to heart and decided to learn a new skill (natural dyeing) so that she could weave with yarns colored by materials she could find and grow in her own yard. She read an article about mud dyeing in Indonesia featuring the work of Karanja Ngana. The article described the use of tannins as mordants (from lobung and haying). While those mordants weren’t available to her, she did, however, have plenty of black tea leaves, which are also high in tannins and had the benefit of adding some brown to the fiber.

Your results may vary. That’s part of the fun!

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