Celebrating 9 Years in the Textile Industry

We can hardly believe it, but this week, Green Matters turns 9! The day I realized that my natural dye research was going to become a business, I was standing in a field of dye plants, here in Lancaster County.

I never imagined that we would grow into a small, commercial scale dye house. I was told multiple times that what I hoped to build was not possible, and would not be embraced by the fashion industry. I was told natural dyes didn’t make a wide enough range of color, that it was too unpredictable. I hope each person who told us that in 2015-2017 when we were first getting things off the ground, has a chance to visit our dyehouse, which is equipped with 5 commercial scale garment dye machines that can dye up to 250 lbs in on dye lot.

When we started, we were hand dyeing yarn in an outdoor studio. It hasn’t exactly been an easy road. We had 15 hour days of hand washing yarn, days driving an SUV full of wet, freshly dyed garments to the laundromat because we didn’t have a commercial dryer yet.

Through all of the growth, the best part of where Green Matters is today is our team and our community. Through all of the chaos of the world we live in, we laugh a lot here. So many of you have mailed us your garments to redyeing, committing preserving the wardrobe you already have.

This is a thank you - to our team, to my family and husband who believed in this wild dream of mine. Thank you to our community, who have now sent us thousands of garments, some include notecards outlining stories of their garments.

Here’s to the future of pollution free color.