White Pine Cone Natural Dye
Winter is in full swing here in Wisconsin, and that makes foraging for natural dye materials pretty difficult. In the spring and summer months, I have access to all sorts of things for dyeing: Japanese knotweed, lots of wildflowers, sumac, tree leaves and much, much more. I had read in a natural dye book I received as a birthday gift a few years ago that you could get dye from pine cones. I’ll admit, I was skeptical, as it seems to me that pine cones are just dry and brown — where could any pigment be? Well, I decided to give them a try; my philosophy is always: just dye it. If I don’t like the color, I’ll just over-dye it with another pigment. That’s kind of the beauty of natural dyes, isn’t it? The plant material is sort of fleeing, only around for a certain period of the year. If the color works, it’s really special, and if and when it doesn’t work, you can just continue dyeing your material to eventually achieve a color you love.
White Pine Cone Natural Dye
Dye Bath
387 g. Pinus strobus cones (white pine)
1.5 gallons water
4 Tbsp Soda Ash (to bring your path to ~10pH)
2 cups iron water
Mordant Bath (Wool)
2 Tbsp Alum
First, you will want to start your mordant bath. Add the Alum to a stainless steel pot, large enough to fit the material you are dyeing and covered with water. Bring this to a boil and ‘scour’ your wool for around 20-30 minutes. Then, start your dye bath. Add the pine cones, soda ash and iron water to a dye pot and cover with 1.5 gallons of water. Bring this to a boil, and boil for about an hour. After an hour, you should have extracted enough pigment to dye your material.
To dye your wool, transfer it from the mordant bath, straight to the dye bath. I will lift up my wool with wooden utensils, and let it sort of drip the excess liquid off before quickly making the transfer. Allow your wool to sit in the dye bath, while the heat is still on, for around an hour, or until you are satisfied with the shade of the color. Remember, wool is always going to appear more dark and saturated in the dye bath than it will once it’s out of the dye bath and fully dried.
To dry the wool, hang it somewhere that will not be affected by drips. I hang mine in the shower and its usually dry within 6-8 hours. After that, marvel at the fact that you just dyed wool from little pine cones found in your backyard.
