Natural Dyeing

It's been two years that I've been contemplating, researching, and looking forward to my inevitable first (real) natural dyeing experiment. In fact, I had a stash of onion skins sitting in my cupboard for about a year now. It was when I was WWOOFing in Canada that I was exposed to dye plants and how you can use them to produce natural and even sometimes rich colors of yellow, purple, green, brown, beige and red. I even attended a fair with my host family where we gave an indigo dye demonstration! So, ever the procrastinator (it's not laziness!), I waited for two years until I was presented an opportunity in a college Chemistry course to create my own lab project. My natural dye experiment was born!

You may be wondering how naturally dyeing fabric with plants, roots, berries, and even bugs relates to Chemistry at all. Well, I'm glad you asked. In order for the color to 'bite' to the fabric you usually need to add something to the mix to make it stick. In the distant past, urine was sometimes used. Being the civilized society we are today, we have a better way. So, metallic salts were found to partly attach to the fibers and partly to the dye so it wouldn't wash out right away. These are called mordants and the most common ones are alum (potassium aluminum sulphate) and iron (ferrous sulphate). Some of the other ones, like chrome, can be much more poisonous and their use is discouraged. In my project, we used red and yellow onion skins, blueberries, and black tea along with mordants of alum, iron, and copper.

When dyeing naturally you can only use natural fibers so in our experiment we used cotton and linen fabric so we could compare the results. Below are the results of all three dyes. Each had a different mordant and the darkest color was obtained with using the iron mordant.  My favorite result is the dark army green that was created using the onion skins and iron mordant.  

Dyeing with Tea

Red and Yellow Onion Skins

Blueberries- yum!

Even after washing, the colors held up well except the blueberry which lost it's lovely purple color. Overall, natural dyeing is a science with many variables and it is hard to get the same color twice. Factors such as amount used, temperature, pH, length of time, and even growing conditions of the plant effect the color. The good news is, every time is a surprise!

An Experiment in Dyeing

I bought some white cotton voile a while back in the hopes of someday (and I use 'someday' loosely) dyeing it to the color of my choice. So, on Sunday as I was moseying about trying to figure out what to do with myself I took out my yellow Rit dye that I got just for such a day. After carefully reading the instructions 5 times (it really is not that hard) I was finally ready! I wanted to create a dimensional look and try a technique with the dyeing so the fabric wouldn't look so flat. After folding the fabric the long way and then the short way, I ended up with a cube of fabric that I kept held in place with string. It was in this way that I thought I could make a sort of plaid with stripes going across and down with more dye being on the ends of the cube where the most dye would end up. Well... it didn't exactly turn out that way but I am still happy with the results. I will definitely keep experimenting with different ways and who knows, maybe I'll even go back to my roots and rock a tie dye effect soon!

It should be mentioned here that my interest in textiles, fibers, and dyeing have taken me all the way to Joybilee Farm in B.C. Canada to learn new skills in this area while staying at the farm as a wwoofer. Here I learned knitting, spinning, carding wool, weaving, and some dyeing techniques.

Tonight as I was cleaning up the remains of my Valentine's Day flowers I had a vision. Surely, I can't let these beautiful flowers go to waste! So, I looked up how to make a dye with the flowers and sure enough there is an easy way that I currently have simmering on the stove right now. I am uncertain of the success of this experiment but it was fun none the less. I pulled out the roses from the bouquet and sprinkled them into a large pot with water and brought them to boil.

Now I am letting them simmer for an hour until the petals lose mostly all their color. The petals will get strained and then I will add some lemon juice which I read will make a more vibrant pink. I will add my fabric that has been sitting in cold water mixed with alum to help hold the dye even after washing. I think I will let it sit in the dye pot overnight (off the heat of course) and see how it turns out in the morning!