The Natural Dye Handbook: A comprehensive guide to exploring plant-based dyeing techniques

by Heidi Iverson

Overview

This rich and comprehensive guide to natural dyeing processes will take your practise to the next level.

Author, Heidi Iverson, explains how to boost the spectrum of colors you can achieve through using a variety of tannins, mordants, modifiers, and mixing colors to get incredible results naturally.

The Natural Dye Handbook includes:
• A library of more than 60 plants including fungi, leaves, bark, roots, flowers, fruit, nuts, and seeds, and the incredible natural-dyed rainbow you can create with them.
• A back-to-basics look at the fundamental principles of natural dyeing to help you understand each plant and process as you continue on your natural dye journey.
• A large section exploring colour theory where Heidi explains how to create your own colour library and techniques for mixing colours.

Heidi explores two different approaches to natural dyeing; a traditional style and a more intuitive approach. Discover mindful dye practices, low-energy alternatives and water-conscious methods as well more traditional dye methods using raw dyestuff, whole plants and ground plants. There is also advice about foraging dye plants safely, ethical harvesting and growing your own dye plants.

Learn how to create your own dye journal in order to track your progress, in this ultimate handbook for natural dyers looking to take their practise further.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781446314760
Publisher:	David & Charles
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	7.48(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Heidi Iverson is a textile artist, teacher, natural dye advocate, and founding member of Fibershed (a non-profit organization that develops regional fiber systems that build ecosystem and community health). She teaches mending and natural dye workshops in Northern California. You can find her on social media at @honeyfolkclothing.

Read an Excerpt

Hi friends, my name is Heidi. I’m originally from the Midwest, where I grew up on a farm near a small town in Northwest Iowa. I studied ceramics, sculpture, and printmaking at the University of South Dakota before moving to Northern California 20 years ago. I now live on the ancestral lands of the Native American Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo tribes in West Sonoma County in Northern California. I’m a textile artist, teacher, natural dye advocate, and founding member of Fibershed (a nonprofit organization that develops regional fiber systems that build ecosystem and community health.) I’ve spent the last 15 years living in a tiny redwood forest with my husband, two ridiculous cats, a family of foxes, and myriad wildlife.

I first discovered natural dyes in 2010, when Rebecca Burgess approached me to design knitting patterns for her natural dye book Harvesting Color. Working with botanically dyed natural fibers and seeing the beautiful colors made from plants gathered from the surrounding landscape sparked my curiosity, and my journey with plant dyes began. Fast-forward to 2019, when I began teaching mending and slow stitching. It was then that I found a way to incorporate my love of natural dyes and plant lore into my art practice, and began hand-dyeing fabric and thread. Botanical dyes and Plant Magick both involve working with the natural world and embracing its beautiful, ever-changing, mercurial ways. They fill the gap between craft, art, and science for me—it’s the alchemy of the unexplainable.

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and our regional lockdown “Shelter in Place” began, I decided to use my time exploring plants and the colors they make, with the intent to create textile art and clothing with my experiments and discoveries. During this time, California experienced an exceptional drought and three consecutive years of wildfires. The impact of this was not only visible on the landscape, but also in the colors the plants and trees were making. After two years of wet winters and significantly fewer fires, I’ve found that I can no longer reproduce some of those colors. Instead I have discovered new colors and found more plants to befriend. I have an ever-growing respect for land and plants, as well as their beautiful, everchanging, mercurial ways.

I also teach natural dye and slow stitching workshops in Northern California. I enjoy sharing my knowledge of natural dyeing, Plant Magick, mending/darning, and patchwork, with a focus on minimum-waste practices. I am happiest outside, gathering madrone bark, acorns, and oak galls and experimenting with plants for dyeing.

Having the privilege of writing a book and sharing my knowledge of natural dyeing has been an incredible experience. My approach to creating color is to emphasize intent over perfection, and I hope after reading it, your love and curiosity for the land and plants that surround you grows. Remember that coaxing colors from plants requires practice, experimentation, and embracing mistakes as opportunities to learn.