Black Walnut Dye
If you are lucky enough to have a black walnut tree in your midst, you can add rich browns to your dye pot in autumn. After the hulls fall from the tree, forage them while green, or even collect them after they turn black, to create a tannin rich dye to use for coloring or a mordant. You can even make extremely dark hues with iron water that are as close to black as you will get in the natural dye world. This tutorial will show you how to brew dye from black walnut hulls on the stove, as well as a cold 'sun' tea dye from the shells. You will see the resulting color swatch samples (cotton & silk) with various mordants and the impact of shifting the color with an iron water bath.