Natural Dyeing with Pericón
Pericón, also known as Mexican Tarragon, is a traditional dyestuff native to Mexico and Central America. It has a pleasant anise or licorice smell which I find to be a real joy to harvest and dye with. These plants were started by seed in our heated greenhouse in April about 6 weeks before our average last frost date. The first week of June they were transplanted out to a row in one of our no-till plots. I harvested the plants in late August when the small yellow flowers were in full bloom. When harvesting I cut back the entire plant tops leaving about 3” for the plants to regenerate. In about 5 weeks the plants were flowering again and I was able to harvest them a second time.
When I harvest the plants, I make bunches right out in the field. Then the bunches are taken into the dry room and hung upside down to dry. From there I use clippers to chop the dry plant tops into 2-3” pieces.
This is my first season growing Pericón so I haven’t been able to experiment with it much yet. The other day I was able to test it on an organic cotton and hemp blend fabric. The fabric was scoured, mordanted with gall tannin then alum + soda ash as explained in the linked post, then dyed with Pericón at 50% WOF. This yielded a lovely dusty green-gold shade. I’m looking forward to testing this dye on wool yarn and I’ll be sure to share the results here when I do.
(Tagetes lucida)
A beautiful medicinal and dye plant native to Mexico and Central America. I love working with this plant. It yields beautiful shades and the dye bath smells like sweet licorice. You will notice this smell right away when you open the dye package!
Use pericón at 50-100% WOF. Weigh out the dyestuff and cover it with water in a dye pot. Bring the heat up to 160°F and hold it there for 1 hour to extract the dye. Strain off the dyestuff, and use the liquid to dye your fiber. Hold the temperature at 160-180°F for one hour, then let the fibers cool in the dye pot.
Resource:
Grown, harvested, and cured by Sara here in southwestern Colorado on Ancient Future Farm. Our family has been tending this land and soil with regenerative growing methods since 2005. Our soil is nurtured through extensive cover cropping and our crops are fertilized with compost that we make right here on site. We never use synthetic chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, or fungicides. Our dye flowers are harvested every day by hand when they reach their optimal potential and then carefully cured in our curing room out of direct sunlight. All of our natural dyestuffs are packaged in heat sealed envelopes to keep them fresh. For best results we recommend using them within a year.
