Naturally Dyed Greens Without Indigo

The other day I asked for blog post topic suggestions and someone asked if I’d share “ways to get green dyes without indigo”. Green is one of my favorite colors to work with and although many beautiful teal, sea-foam, sage, and primary green shades can be achieved by over or under dyeing with indigo; warm green, chartreuse, and olive shades are achieved without it. One of the easiest ways and also one of my favorite ways to achieve green without indigo (and without iron to boot) is by simply dyeing unbleached linen fabric yellow. The combination of natural gray linen and yellow dye will yield green consistently every time!

An alternative method to achieve green without indigo is by dyeing white bleached linen (or any white cellulose fabric such as cotton) yellow, and then shifting it to green in a bath of iron at a low WOF percentage of 2-4% (see my amount recommendations for each dye below). Shifting yellow dyed fabric with iron will not yield green consistently with every yellow dyestuff and the results are finicky because the iron WOF ratio is different for every dye. It can take a lot of experimenting to figure out how to get green rather than brown or ochre shades which are other possible color outcomes when shifting yellow dyed fabric with iron. I should mention that the iron ratios I’m recommending in this post for each dye are what works for me and my water which may not be the same for you. If your fabric goes from yellow right to brown in the iron bath you probably need to decrease the amount of iron. In my experimenting I’ve found that the iron ratio has to be just right to achieve green. It has taken me a lot of time experimenting to figure out what works for me and you will likely have to do the same.

natural unbleached linen on the left and bleached white linen on the right

As always the fabric must be scoured, soaked in a bath of tannin, and mordanted before dyeing. All of the fabric samples I’m sharing today were pre-treated with gall tannin at 12% and then mordanted with potassium aluminum sulfate at 15% + 2% soda ash. You could swap the gall tannin for a yellow tannin such as pomegranate or myrobalan to enhance the yellow color. I love using different color tannins to modify palettes and I share more about this in my book. The yellow natural dyes I selected for this experiment are Osage, weld, dyer’s chamomile, and marigolds. Any strong yellow dyestuff will work so please don’t hesitate to experiment beyond the yellow dyes I’m sharing today. My book Farm & Folk Quilt Alchemy provides detailed instructions regarding how to do the scouring, mordanting and how to set up a dye bath. It also provides my best tips for achieving even results when setting up and working with an iron bath (ferrous sulfate).

Osage Orange

Osage Orange yields a warm very golden shade of yellow. Be sure to check out this post I wrote about dyeing with Osage to achieve gold and green fabric yardage.

From left to right: Sample 1 is Osage at 30% WOF on white linen. Sample 2 is what happens when you shift sample 1 in an iron bath of 3% WOF. The third sample is Osage at 30% WOF on unbleached linen. Note that sample 1 and 3 are the exact same recipe with the only difference being white and unbleached linen. The last sample on the right is sample 3 shifted in an iron bath of 3% WOF.

Dyer’s Chamomile

This next group of samples were dyed with dyer’s chamomile which yields a very warm and true shade of yellow.

From left to right: Sample 1 is dyer’s chamomile at 50% WOF on white linen. Sample 2 is what happens when you shift sample 1 in an iron bath of 2% WOF. The third sample is dyer’s chamomile at 30% WOF on unbleached linen. Note that sample 1 and 3 are the exact same recipe with the only difference being white and unbleached linen. The last sample on the right is sample 3 shifted in an iron bath of 2% WOF.

Weld

This next group was dyed with weld which yields bright neon yellow-green shades on white fibers and neon chartreuse shades on unbleached linen. I was a little appalled by these shades when I first experimented with weld but I’ve grown not only to appreciate them but to adore them. These colors are now featured in almost every quilt I make.

From left to right: Sample 1 is weld at 50% WOF on white linen. Sample 2 is what happens when you shift sample 1 in an iron bath of 2% WOF. The third sample is weld at 50% WOF on unbleached linen. Note that sample 1 and 3 are the exact same recipe with the only difference being white and unbleached linen. The last sample on the right is sample 3 shifted in an iron bath of 2% WOF.

Marigold

The final group of samples were dyed with dried marigold flowers which yield a warm green-yellow on white fibers and true froggy greens on dark linen. How fun and fantastic are these shades?!

From left to right: Sample 1 is marigold flowers at 30% WOF on white linen. Sample 2 is what happens when you shift sample 1 in an iron bath of 2% WOF. The third sample is marigold flowers at 30% WOF on unbleached linen. Note that sample 1 and 3 are the exact same recipe with the only difference being white and unbleached linen. The last sample on the right is sample 3 shifted in an iron bath of 2% WOF.

Pictured below I removed all the original yellow sample shades to feature the green shades together. Yellow dye plants on unbleached linen yield such amazing greens and so do yellow dyed fibers shifted with iron. If you prefer to dye yarn you can substitute unbleached linen for natural gray colored sheep’s wool to achieve the same results. That’s actually how I discovered that gray fibers become green when dyed yellow. I dyed some gray wool from my sheep in a strong yellow dye bath of Chamisa (rabbit brush) and it came out neon green.

I hope this inspires you to give green sans indigo a try! These warm and mineral green shades are so nice to work with. I’ll share another post about the cool bluey greens that are achieved with indigo in a future post.