The other evening I went to an absolutely amazing workshop that was all about using natural plant dyes. I felt so fortunate to go to this particular workshop and to hear about the work of Rebecca Burgess, an inspiring woman on a mission to make the clothes which we wear – and the manner in which they are produced – more in tune with the natural world. Her project, Fibershed, is an experiential year in which Rebecca is only wearing clothing made of fibers that she can source from within an 150 mile radius of her California home. Please check out her website for further enlightenment, and be assured that this is amazing, world-changing, brilliant stuff!
Interestingly enough, many of the plant dyes that make such beautiful colors are also medicinals. In our evening of immersion dyeing we used sagebrush (Artemisia sp.), Horsetail (Equisetum sp.), Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), Pokeberry (Phytolacca americana), Black walnut (Juglans nigra) and galls off Oak (Quercus sp.) The herbalist could very well use some of these same plants for healing purposes – take Horsetail for instance, which is used for urinary disorders, or Pokeberry which has been used to treat tumors. The plants speak to us not only through their actions on our bodies, but also through their colors!
So, let us know that not only can the foods and herbal medicines that we
ingest be healing, but so can the clothes that we wear on our bodies.
How entirely beautiful it would be to clothe ourselves in fibers grown
and spun from the natural resources of our own lands, and colored by the plants that surround us.
