Journal

Studio Exclusive: Dyeing with Hollyhock, true blues

We’re always told that blue is the most difficult colour to achieve naturally. Indigo and woad are the traditional sources, but they come with their own challenges - you need masses of plant material, the fermentation process takes weeks, and there’s often some fairly unpleasant chemistry involved. For anyone working on a smaller scale, it can feel like blue is simply out of reach.

Which is why I was so surprised when I discovered black hollyhocks.

A small handful of Alcea nigra petals will give you genuine blues - not the murky greenish tones you might expect from most flowers, but clear, true blues ranging from pale denim to deep navy. It seems almost too straightforward to work, which is probably why it’s not talked about more.

Black hollyhocks might sound exotic, but they’re more ordinary than you’d think. Mine came from one of those plant racks outside a supermarket - three for a tenner. Nothing special, no hunting through specialist nurseries or ordering heritage varieties online. Just regular garden centre plants that happened to be the right ones.  If you see them, snap them up.

And you only need three plants to get started. Each one will give you flowers throughout the summer, and each flower holds enough colour for small-scale dyeing projects. A few petals will tint a skein of wool, a handful will give you a deeper shade.

The process itself is refreshingly simple. No fermentation vats, no complex chemistry, no waiting weeks for results. Just flowers, heat, and fabric.

If you want to grow your own, it’s even easier than buying them - I’ll share the growing details below. But there’s something satisfying about discovering that one of natural dyeing’s most coveted colours can come from something so wonderfully unremarkable.

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