Rebecca Desnos, who wrote the book and zine I have been using for natural dyes for fabric and yarn, has just published a new book. Botanical Dyes on Wood. Since I love making peg dolls, I decided to see what happened when I dyed the pegs with natural dyes.

I thought of idea in time to use the dyes baths I had made from yarrow, sage and the fabulous crab apple leaves. And hands down, the crab apple leaf was as interesting and as beautiful on wood as it was on fabric and cotton yarn!

Here are the dyes on wood before I sealed them with bees wax polish. As you can see, the yarrow and sage, which dyed fabric light tan, didn’t add a lot of color the the wooden flower pots. There is a difference, but it’s not a lot. It takes the bees wax polish to really bring out the dye colors. (See photo at the top of the post).

Left to right, un-dyed flower pot, yarrow, sage, crab apple leaves

This was fun. I may add a couple pegs to future dye baths to see what happens, but I don’t expect I will be making up natural dyes expressly for dyeing wood pegs.

On the other hand, this Sage Fellow, in his hand woven serape, is a mighty cute peg person!