Jar with orange sticker labeled "Osage Orange: Maclura Pomifera"

Arrangement of yarn skeins and fiber swatches dyed yellow with osage orange, together with a small wooden container of osage orange chips.

Fiber swatch showing bright yellow wool yarn.

Fiber swatch showing yellow handloom cotton.

Fiber swatch showing yellow tussah silk.

Osage Orange Natural Dye

from $24.99

Shepherd Textiles Osage Orange Natural Dye comes from the heartwood of maclura pomifera, a hardwood tree native to Oklahoma and Texas. The Osage people valued the strong wood for making bows, while early settlers planted the thorny trees close together to make living fences. Osage Orange heartwood has a strong yellow-orange hue that comes from a dye compound called maclurin. The dye can be extracted from the wood simply by simmering it in water, and then applied to natural fibers for beautiful yellow shades.

Our Osage Orange contains fine shavings and sawdust collected from the heartwood of felled trees. It is rich in dyestuff and the small size of the shavings makes it easy to extract the color. It will give intense yellow shades with just 25%-30% weight-of-fabric (WOF). A four-ounce container is enough to dye up to a pound of fiber to a bright yellow, although the final shade will depend on the fiber type and the depth of mordanting.

Please check out our Guide to Dyeing with Osage Orange for color recipes, fiber preparation, and important safety information.

Made in the USA from U.S.-grown trees.

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