natural plant dyes // hollyhock

This year is the first time the tall hollyhock flowers have bloomed in the garden. I have a few different colours growing; white, pink + a dark plum variety too. The darker petals are the ones which you can dye with.

I have enjoyed looking back through some of my books to see what plants I should grow + collect from the garden. ‘Wild Colour’ by Jenny Dean is a really great book which lists lots of plants to dye with. With her years of experience + knowledge there are many techniques she uses to achieve many different colours from dyeing with just from one plant. Hollyhock is one which pops up in Jenny’s book.

Although I stay away from using chemicals when plant dyeing, I still managed to get some lovely colour results from dyeing with the deep purple petals.

I collected only a handful of the spent flowers from the garden. These were then left to soak in water overnight, then placed back on the hob to simmer for a while to release as much colour as possible.

Once the flowers had been removed + strained, I was left with a purple/grey coloured dye.

The magic part - by simply adding some white wine vinegar to the the dye bath, the colour instantly changed to pink! In goes the pre-treated cotton to soak away.

I left the cotton to soak in the dye pot overnight before removing. Once left to dry in the shade, I was left with this pretty smoky lilac. The hollyhock cotton without the vinegar was a much paler shade of grey without the warm pink tones.

The hollyhocks are sadly coming to an end after all this heat + dry weather. So I’m hoping to collect the remaining petals + squeeze in another dye bath before hopping onto the next plant on the list. The vinegar was amazing as it really improved the colour results!