There was a lull in during the hot days of summer when there weren’t many flowers blooming in my little yard. But in September, suddenly I had a lot of blossoms. I’d read that marigolds can make a lovely yellow natural dye. And indeed, they do!

The flat of marigolds I planted around by kitchen garden last spring had a mix of yellow, orange and red/gold variegated flowers. Only 2 of them were yellow, which is the color I keep trying to achieve with my natural dye experiments. I never want to strip a plant of all it’s flowers—the plant and the pollinators need them! So I was able to harvest about 10 blossoms which I figured might be enough to dye my small hank of #3 cotton crochet yarn. Using a soy milk mordant I did indeed get a soft yellow. This one makes me happy.

All summer I waited patiently for my large patch of pink and purple asters to bloom. By mid September they’d created a riot of color.

Would the purple asters give me a pink, purple or some other color dye? I used the whole flower, not just the petals.

Yellow green?? It’s actually a lovely color, but so not what I was hoping for from those deep purple flowers. I took two aliquots of the dye solution and added vinegar to one and baking soda to the other. I thought that the baking soda brightened the color, so that the color you see is above is aster natural dye with alkali.

This was fun, but now I understand why there isn’t much out there about natural dyeing using aster flowers!