Experiments Dyeing with Goldenrod

It looks a bit like a medical sample but this jar of sunshine dyed the most incredible yellow. I have an abundance of goldenrod growing around me - in my back and front yards and all through the laneway that runs alongside my house. So this year, I decided to brew up a little dye bath and see what would happen. The results were surprising and possibly my most successful batch of natural dye yet.

This was a pretty simple process. I started by clipping the flower branches from a generous handful of goldenrod. It’s important to do this when the goldenrod is in full bloom for maximized colour. I foraged and clipped only what I needed so there was lots left for the bees. I popped the blooms in my dye pot and covered with a kettle full of boiling water and then left it to steep in the sun for the rest of the day. Goldenrod has a strong odour when it’s cooking so I found this method minimized the smells inside my apartment and also a little more energy efficient.

When I went to get the pot it had evaporated a fair amount (it was a hot day) but what was left was a beautiful concentrate. I removed the plant matter and composted and then brought the pot inside. I wasn’t too concerned about little bits of matter in the pot, I like the irregularities and marks that they make, so I didn’t strain but you could strain it through some cheesecloth for a clearer dye, if desired.

I had two pieces of heavy cotton fabric and a lovely organic cotton bandana that I had just adorned with flower and leaf prints in Lizz Aston’s wonderful Midsummer Flower Pounding on Cloth workshop at the Contemporary Textile Studio. These pieces had already been mordanted using soy so they were ready for dyeing and this saved me a step and some time (if you need to know how to do this, there are many tutorials and resources online).

I warmed up the dye, wet my fabrics, and added them to the pot. I purposefully left some bits of the bandana poking out of the top of the dye bath to create some gentle spotting.

I will most likely use the canvas squares to make some pouches with embroidery stitching and I’m already wearing the bandana :)

Thank you to Rebecca Desnos for continually being an amazing and generous resource for natural dyeing processes and to goldenrod for being so deliciously vibrant.