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

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.

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 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).

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.

This book is worth getting. Interesting information. Inspires me to experiment.

This lovely book covers much of the dye bed information I was seeking, as a first-year dyer. It will be a treasured reference book for years to come, as it covers all aspects of soil to harvest and mordants. I love this book and highly recommend it to anybody who's considering dying. It's so easy to grow your own dyes or to harvest from local plants, after reading this and 'Wild Colors.'

Having used a borrowed copy of Buchanan's Dyer's Garden book, I thought this would contain much of the text from that book PLUS info on growing bast plants. I was wrong. This is an ok introduction to a very large topic, but it does not have the same level of detail. If natural dyes are your primary interest, skip this book and buy A Dyer's Garden instead.

Purchased this book thinking it was going to teach me how to dye using natural dyes and dye methods and it miss the mark completely. The only photos in the book are sketches of some of the featured plants in the book and several color photos.This book is recommended for those that know little about dye plants and want to learn the species, growing conditions, etc...but as far as learning how to do actual dyeing with natural dyes along with color photos for reference - look elsewhere.Also, if you have eyes that are pushing the mid-century mark, this book has small type. Just so you know.

Great book and a lot of information.

I got this book out from the library so many times that the librarian recommended I get my own copy so someone would have a chance to read it. Brilliant book about growing plants for textiles, dye and tools used in weaving. From linen to woad, this book is a basic primer for anything you ever wanted to grow.

I wad thorough and well written

Looking to grow your own dyes at home or on your alotment or small holding. I would highly recommend this as it gives you so much insight of what each plant you may consider using. I was very interested in Flax and cotton. Would recommend to anyone.

This is not a 'how to' book but it is an excellent resource book for this subject.