Monday, August 19, 2019

Jenny Dean and Wild Color - behind the scenes

I rely heavily on Jenny Dean's book Wild Color for natural dyeing, but my results rarely match what is in the book. Now I know why: the colors shown in the book are not from actual dye samples but from swatches matched to a Pantone chart. Dean had only so much control over what went into the book, as revealed in her recent blog post (which you can find HERE).

Dean claims the second revised edition of her self-published book “Colours from Nature” more closely matches how she currently dyes, so I guess I will have to get a copy of that and see what the differences are. Also, I would like her to know that while she was not able to get purples from hollyhock blossoms, I did using black hollyhocks.

I am really glad to have come across Dean's blog post because I am supposed to make a presentation about natural dyeing to my local weavers guild next March. Now I can point my fiber friends in the right direction. Serendipity, baby!

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