Natural Dye

Osage Orange Sawdust is shredded heart wood of the Osage Orange trees (Maclura pomifora) that we self-foraged & wild-harvested ourselves.

Using Osage Orange as a dye material offers a range of colors from soft yellow, bright yellow to vibrant amber. It yields good depth of color at 15-30% WOF.

Osage Orange is considered an invasive tree to our specific area in Indiana. We met with a land preservation trust on a mission to return land in our county back to its native state, which means we rescue felled Osage Orange trees and logs as they clear them out. UaZit turns and carves the wood into wares. The sawdust byproduct would otherwise go to waste.

We wrote a blog post all about Osage Orange & its rich history.

To use: Soak sawdust in water for a few hours or overnight. When soaking is complete, bring this bath up to simmer and cook for an hour. Strain the sawdust out before dyeing your textiles then simmer for about 45-60 minutes. Can be used with both protein and cellulose fibers.

Options: Dyeing in a copper dyepot or adding a few clean copper pennies to the dyebath will brighten the yellow. Adding 2-4% iron to the dyebath will produce olive greens. Over or under dyeing with indigo yields bright emerald and leaf greens.

Self-foraged & processed by WaZeil & UaZit.