Wild Color, Revised and Updated Edition: The Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes

The book I received was as represented.

I am pretty new to dying - and this book has been a huge help! It is concise, but it is full of information!

As everyone else says, this is a wonderfully informative and useful book, but I simply can't read the body of print. I'd buy it again if there were a digital edition that could be 'pinched' open, or at least with an option boost the print size.

I bought this book as an introduction to natural dyeing based on several recommendations. I have been mostly pleased with the information in the book. It's not perfect, and I think the title is slightly misleading, but it's a solid introduction.The good:It has a good list of natural dye sources along with color swatches that show the colors achieves using the plant alone, plant plus mordant, plant alone plus modifier, and mordant, plant, and modifier. Very very usefulIt has a very clear introduction to dying that covers techniques and steps in the dyeing process (it even has a small section on using urine to dye with indigo and woad). Pretty thorough for for a relatively small book.The illustrations are well done and in full color.The bad:Organization - the key for the plant sections is located on page 20, which is 2 sections away from the plant section. It's located in a small sidebar that is easily overlooked. Why couldn't the sidebar be located in the chapter it's actually related to?I was expecting more of an emphasis on plants native to North America. From the title I expected it to be a book of dyes that *I* could collect from the wild. WHile there are several that grow wild either as native plants or as imports, that is not at all the focus. THe focus is on natural dyes, and the plants listed are largely cultivated species grown in various locations in the world, not wild plants you can find in your backyard.The conclusion:This is a good book, you will not go wrong in buying it as an introduction to natural dyeing. The organizational quibble can be overcome (remember, key to the plant section is on page 20). Once you've read through this book and practiced you should be well equipped to begin experimenting with plants that do grow wild in your own yard!

I have been using natural dyes for quite some time, but this book was still well worth it. She covers so many different dye plants and methods. It's a fantastic book! My only quibbles are with the production--the type in this paperback is rather cramped, but I know it's expensive to produce full-color books these days. Also, I spent a great deal of time searching for the meaning of the little symbols next to the color samples--I could tell they were about preparation/mordants, but for the life of me, I must have searched for a light year to find the key--which is located in the narrative section at the beginning of the book (p 21, in the introduction, which sounds like an obvious place but I found it very hard to locate!).

Wild Color is the best book for learning and using basic recipes for preparing various materials for dye. The book covers quite a few types of plant materials (leaves, roots, stems) and the expected colors you may achieve if you process the materials alone, and new shades with various mordants. Dean lays out the book with an easy to read key with color examples. You will lean the basic recipes at the start, and the dye pages are organized by the plant. It includes shades you can achieve based on the part of the plant, and where applicable, the season you collect the material. The pages for each plant also discuss cultivation, where the plant can be grown, how to harvest and process along with the handy color guide for what your dye will yield depending on your preparation on the dye material. A must have book. Hang on to it and don't lend it out because you'll never get it back. :-)

I saw a friend's copy of this book at a wool-dying session and it was so incredibly beautiful that I had to buy it. The official description includes this passage: "This comprehensive book outlines all the necessary equipment, how to select fibers and plant parts, choose the right methods for mordanting and dyeing, test color modifiers and the fastness of dyed colors, and obtain a range of gorgeous colors from every plant, from alter to woad, shown in more than 250 swatches." This does not do the book justice. The color swatches offer a side-by-side comparison of various color treatments on various materials. In practice, your color swatches are not going to exactly match any book-prescribed color, but this gives a pretty good view (and discussion) of the options available for creating color shades.When I originally paged though the book, I did not notice how detailed the descriptions of dye plants were (I got sucked into the gorgeous colors). I thought I would have to buy another book (I was thinking I'd also need A Dyer's Garden, which is out-of-print and somewhat hard to find), but I think this will do for now. It includes instructions on using various parts of many plants and preparing the dye and mordant.

Great format for beginners but so much information for the dyer who has experience. Wonderful resource and a must book to have on hand for any fiber enthusiast that loves to dye!

Totally brilliant book. The instructions are clear and easy to follow, the pictures are beautiful and there are clear guidelines to what results you can expect to get from using the different plants and methods.I'd say this is a good book for beginners, but I know that even as I progress with dyeing, it will be my favourite 'go to' book.It makes great bedtime reading too as you can just browse the sections and get lost in all those lovely colours :D

It's okay. But it concentrates almost totally on dyeing fibers aka wool, silk, cotton and linen.If you want like me to dye paper, you could be forgiven for thinking you're out of luck.However, there is a good deal of information in this book. Including ph testing of your water, and the subsequent altering of that ph, to obtain the colours you want, plus mordanting and dye modifiers. It even mentions lichen dyeing, which is an entire other discipline and very complex. So it might be possible to extract information from this book to help paper dyers (or book boilers) too.So for me the total absence of information of dyeing paper, means this book is NOT 'complete'. Interesting though, with some history included.

This is such a lovely book! Well set out, clear information and beautiful photos throughout. My only slight quibble is that I would rather the plants had been set out according to their common names rather than their Latin ones. Otherwise fantastic !! I guess my Latin will improve too :-)

I love the way this book has all the colours on the outside of the pages so that you can easily flick through and find the colour you want. Lots of fantastic information about the plants used to make the colours. A great resource for the natural dyer.

Amazingly instructive book with well compiled detailed information on everything you need to know re natural dyeing from plants. Encyclopaedic in its value on the clear instructions on processes, mordants, Dye recipes etc. Beautiful functional illustrations from a master of her art. Jenny Dean is a guru of dyeing from nature.