What can be used for green dye?

The easiest--to-use dyes you can use are the synthetic dyes. If you're dyeing cotton, buy some fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX or Remazol dye. This dye will be easier to apply than any other dye, because it can be applied at a warm room temperature and does not have to be cooked into the fabric or yarn. It will also last longer than any other type of dye, because it forms a permanent chemical bond to the cellulose in the cotton. It is so easy to use these synthetic dyes that even a beginner can get good results. Since there are very few dyes that are naturally green, you can buy a green mixture that contains both blue and yellow dyes, which produce green when used together, or you can mix your own different shades of green from any shade of blue plus yellow.

I get the impression that you're asking about natural dyes, though. There are many plants that will produce a very temporary green color on your fabric or yarn, if you mordant your fiber first by boiling it with alum—for cotton, mordant with alum, then with tannin, then with alum again—but none give very good permanent results. Those grass stains on the knees of your kids' pants only seem permanent when you're trying to wash them out; they quickly turn brown and fade, however. The green coloring in plants comes from chlorophyll, which quickly dulls to brown, so they're not much good as green dyes at all. What good is a dye color that doesn't last through two launderings?

The best way to produce a good green color with natural dyes is in a two-step process, dyeing with blue and yellow in two completely separate dyebaths. It does not work well to try to combine the two colors in one pot. The best plant-based blue is indigo; you can also buy the identical indigo chemical produced by synthetic means or from indigo-bearing plants. There are about fifty different plants around the world that produce the same indigo chemical; they have been independently discovered and used by a number of different cultures throughout history. The application of indigo is much more challenging than that of fiber reactive or direct dyes, require the creation of a low-oxygen dyebath. See "How to fix indigo dye", which was posted in the Dye Forum on September 23, 2008. You can also use logwood, with a copper mordant, for a darker, more subtle natural green dye; logwood is easier to apply than indigo, but rather expensive to buy, and impossible to grow in your own yard. J. N. Liles' book, The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing, includes recipes for all of these dyes, and also for less popular dyes such as Prussian Blue and Chrome Green.

For the second step, there are many different yellow plant-based dyes. (It is important to apply indigo before the yellow dye, since it is difficult to get a smooth blue using indigo on fabrics that have been mordanted for use with the yellow dye.) In fact, the vast majority of plant-based dyes produce yellow. Many, such as turmeric and saffron, are poorly lightfast, fading quickly if exposed to light at all. The best natural yellow dyes last longer; they include weld, quercitron, and fustic. See my blog entry from April 30, 2008, "How can I improve the lightfastness of turmeric dye?"

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