Natural Dyeing with Old Black Walnuts

Fresh green walnut husks are used for yarn dyeing for best results.  But, can you use old walnuts that you find lying on the ground in January?  Yes!  I got lovely colors from walnut dyeing this week in January.  The colors range from a light brown to a warm light/medium brown, to a reddish brown.  

On a nice January day while going for a walk, we found old black walnuts on the ground at the edge of our property by a creek.  They were brown and black, rotting, and broken.  I wondered if I could still get enough black walnut dye from the old walnuts, so we collected over half of a 5-gallon bucket.

I used a large canning pot and filled it with the black walnuts along with some leaves and water almost to cover the walnuts.  The water turned from clear to tan to brown pretty quickly.  After about an hour, it looked like this.

I cooked the black walnuts for 4 hours at just a very low simmer.  The black walnuts turned very dark, and the dye liquid turned almost black.

I soaked two skeins of Knit Picks bare worsted weight wool yarn in water overnight.  To the water in one bowl, I added about 3 tablespoons alum, and to the water in the other bowl, I added about 3 tablespoons of cream of tartar.  Walnut dyeing doesn't require a mordant, but the walnuts were so old so I thought I'd try using mordants.

Since the walnuts were so old, I didn't know if I'd get much color from them in the finished yarn.  Next year I'll collect the green husks and use those for walnut dyeing, but it was fun to experiment.

I removed each of the black walnuts from the dye bath the next day, and also put the dye through a fine sieve.  There were a lot of small walnut pieces and leaves that were collected in the sieve.

Next I put the yarn which was mordanted with Alum into the cooled dye bath.  I let the dye bath come to just a low simmer.  I simmered the yarn in the dye bath for 1 1/2 hours.


My granddaughter was my helper, and it was fun walnut dyeing together.  She loved it and wants to try dyeing with marigolds and Queen Anne's lace next summer.

The yarn looks so dark in the dye bath, but since the walnuts were so old, I assumed I would probably get a finished tan yarn, but I was hoping for more color.  I let the yarn cool in the dye bath for several hours.

The yarn was drained on a stick over the dye pot until it stopped dripping.  The weather was nice enough to later hang the skein outside to dry.

Here's how the skein that was mordanted in Alum turned out after rinsing it until the water was clear and letting it dry.  I am really happy with it.

                                  Wool Mordanted with Alum and Dyed with Walnuts

Next I dyed the skein of yarn that was mordanted with cream of tartar.  I placed it into the same dye pot, and I simmered it for 2 hours.  I let it cool for awhile in the dye before placing it on the stick over the dye pot to let the dye drain off. 

I hung the skein to dry.  Then I rinsed it until the water was clear and let it dry outside.
I love how this skein turned out.  I love the different shades of brown and reddish brown in it.

Wool Mordanted with Cream of Tartar and Dyed with Walnuts 

We really enjoyed experimenting with old walnuts for dyeing wool yarns.   Natural dyeing is so much fun because you really don't know exactly what color you'll end up with.