Dyeing with Lichen?!?

LUNGWORT a.k.a. : Lobaria pulmonaria

Here’s a picture of my natural dye experiments with lungwort lichen using the Boil Water Method (BWM) of color extraction.

If you like shades of caramel brown, you too can try this extraction process as it’s pretty easy to do.

In the picture above you can see my experiments in obtaining color on unbleached cotton muslin, bleached 50/50% cotton/poly blend, raw silk and wool yarn.

Ethical Harvesting:

As always, we should be mindful to only collect lichens from downed branches or if it’s already lying on the ground unattached to any substrate. Also, be sure to get persmission before gathering anything on private property.

A Little Bit About Lichen:

Lichens are composite organisims consisting of a fungus and a photosynthetic partner, most commonly green algae, less often cyanobcteria, also known as blue-green algae. This partner provides carbohydrate and energy for the metabolic processes of itself and the fungus, while the fungus provides both physical…and chemical protection…to repel herbivores by acting as foul-tasting deterrents to browsing invertebrates.

-Natural Dyes by Dominique Cardon (p. 485)

The Process:

I did not use a pre-fixative or, mordant since lichen dyes do not need to have a mordant to fix the color to the cloth.

Boil Water Method (BWM)

My take aways from this experimentation:

I extracted color and dyed fabrics with this lichen as whole pieces and by grinding the pieces up in a coffee grinder before color extraction. I was most surprised that the whole lichen extraction actually came out darker in shade on the cloth than that of the crushed up lichen. I thought that the finer ground pieces would lend more intense color to the cloth but exactly the opposite was true!

Would I try dyeing with this lichen again?

Not really. Shades of caramel are pretty, but I prefer the richer and varied colors from other sources of natural dye stuffs to shades of brown.

Info courtesy of the following :

Lichen Dyes: The New Source Book by Karen Diadick Casselman

Natural Dyes: Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science by Dominique Cardon