Buttery yellow from garden weeds or gorgeous garnet-red dye from flowers — achieving stunning colors for your fabric, yarn, and other natural materials is almost as easy as boiling water, with ingredients as close as your spice cabinet and as plentiful as fallen leaves on an autumn day.

Through step-by-step instructions and color-saturated photographs, textile designer Sasha Duerr explains the basics of making and using natural plant dye, from gathering materials and making the dyes to simple ideas for how to use them.

Have a picnic on a sunny turmeric-yellow tablecloth, give a baby some adorable acorn-dipped booties, craft a set of stunning black-walnut pillows, or treat yourself to a little black(berry) dress. Experimenting with color has never been more tempting to try.

Gentle, sustainable, garden-to-garment practices will inspire knitters, sewers, and fabric lovers of all stripes to transform fiber, textiles, and even pre-loved clothes into works of art — and to have a lot of fun in the process.