how come back in the colonial days, linen was hard to dye ?

Question

Im doing a project for school about colonial america. it says linen was hard to dye. why is that ?

Answer 1

Dye technology wasn't that great. You would need something that was 1) the colour you want 2) would stain fairly easy and 3) would stay in the product you were dying.

Back in the day, different cultures took different natural products for dye. They tended to have limited colours, and spend a lot of back breaking work trying to stain stuff.

Not like today with synthetics and chemicals and machines to mix and dry or whatever.