A Weaver's Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers

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 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).

I just bought and downloaded this book and found there are no color pictures in the book. Not very useful. I would really like to know how to achieve colors and see a color chart or pictures. Too bad I can't return the book and purchase something with color. Good info on growing and processing fibers and plants for dying.

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.'

This book is very good and can be read aloud by Alexa.

lots of combinations and color ideas

Excellent book that wandered away from my library and needed to be replaced.

Great book

Really informative, interesting book. Only negative comment I would make is that it could do with some of the plants being shown in colour.

Great book very imformative, cant wait to get planting

This book was a gift but I'm sure my friend found it useful along with the similar books that I sent

An extremely useful book, with interesting and relevant information to what I need, as well as "chatty" information here and there to make this a very easy and enjoyable read despite the technical knowledge it contains.

good book

A useful book

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.

Great book and a lot of information.

I wad thorough and well written