Natural Color
OWNER OF THE WHIMSICALLY NAMED Oakland-based store A Verb for Keeping Warm, Kristine Vejar has been championing the art of natural dyeing for more than a decade. A lifelong lover of textiles, Vejar spent childhood summers in rural Illinois among knitting and sewing circles, but says she never thought much about how the fibers got their color. When asked why she became interested, she answers with a laugh: “India is to blame.”
While spending an undergraduate semester abroad in Jaipur, Vejar encountered beautiful, colorful textiles unlike any she had seen in the U.S. She discovered that the fabrics had been colored using dyes created from plants rather than synthetic chemicals, something she had never heard of before. “I was instantly intrigued,” she says.
At the suggestion of a teacher, Vejar headed to the Great Rann of Kutch, an expansive area of saline mudflats in the Thar Desert on the Arabian Sea. The region is home to the Rabari, a group of nomadic pastoralists famous for their intricate embroidery and appliqué. Vejar visited a Rabari farm and became fascinated by their works, as well as by the vibrant and various handmade textiles of the desert region.
After briefly returning to the U.S. to finish her degree, Vejar traveled back to India on a Fulbright grant to document the Rabari’s vast lexicon of motifs and to learn more about the area’s textiles. She came upon a farm and studio dedicated to natural dyeing, and knew right away she wanted to learn as much as possible.
With this new experience and knowledge Vejar launched her business, at first dyeing yarn in her kitchen to sell at craft shows, and eventually moving to a 1,700 square-foot facility that includes classrooms, dye studios, and a garden, where Vejar cultivates a wide variety of plants for dyeing including madder, indigo, coreopsis, yarrow, marigolds, pomegranates, and cosmos. She even raises one insect, the cochineal, which lives on nopal cactus and produces red and pink colorants.
Some colors, like yellow, can be easily achieved using gardenvariety materials like onion skins, rhubarb, and eucalyptus. Other colors are a bit more difficult: indigo, the plant used to make blue, requires a complicated process of reduction. Vejar’s personal favorite, the marigold flower, holds enough pigmentation that it can be thrown directly into a dye bath and yield a strong, beautiful, mustardy-gold color.
Vejar’s hope is to make others more conscious of how textiles are created, and to spread the joy and fulfillment she’s gotten from natural dyeing. In her 2015 book, The Modern Natural Dyer, she explains that using natural dyes is an eco-conscious way to honor and enjoy nature, and ultimately opens new opportunities for appreciating textiles. It’s a great guide for beginners, explaining the different steps necessary for dyeing as well as the two different types of natural materials: whole dyestuffs, like plants, bark, or insects, and natural concentrated extracts.
Dyeing with natural materials requires time and patience, says Vejar. Weather conditions, soil, and age can affect colors, but she believes that’s part of the fun. There is room for constant experimentation and exploration, which makes it the perfect craft for anyone who is eager to learn.
