2025 and later

Malia Logan of 5280 interviewed me for the magazine in regards to women in the sustainable fashion scene in Denver. Below is the excerpt of the article. To see the full article visit https://5280.com/denver-best-sustainable-designers/  "The magic of plant dye, Leah Rich says, is that no two items ever turn out the same. Soil, water, even how plants are picked can alter the colors they produce. Under the banner of Round Trip Goods, Rich transforms secondhand garments using marigolds, indigo, and other plants she grows, buys, or forages. “I usually work with a blank article of clothing I find at the thrift...

I am working my way through Jason Logan's book "Make Ink" and currently boiled up some acorn caps for a rich dark grey ink for paper. I foraged a big paper bag full of large, smooth acorn caps from old oak trees near my Mom's house in Louisville, Kentucky last winter. I let them dry out first, then gave them a good wash before boiling them for 4-5 hours on a low simmer, the time split over 2 days.  After the boiling, I strained out the caps, added ferrous sulfate (iron salts that oxidizes the tannins within the dye/ink) to...

This spring I tried my first attempt at achieving black cotton with natural dyes. Coaxing the fabric to absorb layer after layer of colors was a very fun experiment and is just the beginning of a journey into richer, darker hues.  In the first picture I have the same fabric, undergoing the same dye process, with the darker cotton simply soaked in the dye bath longer by 2 or 3 weeks. I found an article on botanicalcolors.com that gives a detailed recipe for a European black dye that includes iron, tannin, and logwood.  There is a shimmering quality to the...

I was so excited to witness all the plant life in Costa Rica last summer that I brought a scoured and mordanted piece of cotton and some string so that I might bundle dye a bandana from the fallen flowers I come across. Let me be clear I had no intention and did not remove any plant matter from any forests, I only collected flowers along roadsides and neighborhoods that had fallen, along with 1 achiote pod from the farm I stayed on, with permission.  So, during our first week, I gathered bright crimson hibiscus, bougainvillea, and other bold and...