A Weaver's Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers (Dover Crafts: Weaving & Dyeing)

This is what I was looking for to dip my toe in to learning something that I realize is more complicated that it seems on the surface. It’s not a manual on how to do all the things in practice, it contains basic instructions and a wide range of information about plants and modes of use and a ton of references on how to proceed with learning about specifics you want to tackle. It’s an overview of what plants are used for fiber, how and where they’re grown; an overview of dye plants, growing and processes; soap plants; fragrance plants. If you’re looking for a book on working in practice with specific plant(s) this isn’t for you. It’s a great reference for what is out there, how it’s grown and how it can be used, and again, covers wide ground so don’t expect hand holding recipes. Basic instructions can really help inform what processes you may want to go further with. Personally, I’d love to try indigo dying but I’ll skip fermenting urine for 2 weeks so it was nice to see less fragrant options presented alongside and understand basically how each option varies in results based on preparation

This is a book on types of plants, and choosing the varieties that will work best for you. There's some information on using the plants, and a little on how to grow them, but this is primarily a guide to the basic plants that a fiber artist might find useful. While you might think that would be something irrelevant today (with wikipedia and the rest of the internet out there), it's actually wonderfully useful to have a compiled list of these plants, well organized and annotated, that you can reference before going online for more in-depth research. It helps most if you're intermediate or beginner-level at gardening and fiber arts; if you don't know what you don't know, this book will really help give an overview of the plants that might help you or just appeal to you. The author also includes little details about each plant that might not be easy to find online (such as, the dye from this plant is not colorfast in sunlight, or notes on pH for different colors, or comments on whether the fiber is difficult to spin).If you work with many natural fibers and dyes, this book should be in your reference library. You may only use it to remind you what to search for in your online research, but there's no other book or compiled list like this one. Well worth having.

It has more information than I thought I would see. Finding out I have more plants I can use as dye and fiber.

Excellent material well written left me wanting more information on natural dyeing, oh another reason for collecting plants on those long walks in the forest.

This is my first year dying with plants, and I checked this book (along with several others) out of our local library over the winter so I could prepare for the short growing season. This is the only one I went out and purchased so I could have a copy on hand. I'm trying to focus on plants I have growing in my own yard, and Rita's book is extremely helpful when I'm trying to figure out what to do with an uncommon dyeplant - for instance, she has a page where she talks about dyeing with pokeberries, but extrapolates from that to give some general rules that should work for dyeing with almost all berries - helped me when I tried to dye using buckthorn berries, mulberries, and cherries. I've since bought several other dye books, but if I could only choose one to have on hand, it would be this one (or her companion book, A Dyer's Garden - but I loved the information on fiber plants that this book had).

This book is well written and covers the topic of growing plants for natural dyes and fibers well. I will definitely use it to plan my garden for Spring 2023. Thank you!

This will be a reference book forever.

Lots of helpful information for natural dyers, both cloth and yarn. No illustrations, but chocked full of recipies. If you are a natural dyer you need this book.