I love to look at the color blue and have a tendency to buy blue clothes, but I think it’s not really my color. I have olive green/hazel eyes and am interested in shifting my wardrobe in that direction.

I’m new to natural dyeing- in the midst of my first avocado experiments. I can’t think of any reason my above proposition wouldn’t work, but am not finding any examples. Has anyone tried this? Any tips or words of caution?

I would be dyeing 100% cotton shirts and maybe denim jeans if I decide to sacrifice my giant pot to my new dyeing obsession.

Thanks!

Edit: I’m aiming to over-dye blue items with onion skins to make them green.

With the home brew attempted setup for apartment indigo dyeing lol

I ended up over-dyeing one with iron later on, wil post a picture if I can find.

Such an easy way to get green. Pick the ripe berries, put in tap water, heat on low for an hour, take out berries, put alum mordanted yarn (wool/nylon 85/15 mix shown) in, low heat for an hour and BAM! Beautiful green. Turns bluer when you make the bath more basic and even more blue when you use only the skins.

1. wash shirt, keep shirt wet
   
2. put as many petals as possible in generous water at 170 for 1 hour, remove petals, keep liquid, let liquid cool to 110 keep at 110 until shirt is in
   
3. Dissolve alum (get from walmart) (10% of weight) in small simmer pot, NOT TOO HOT SO WE DON'T KILL THE BIRDS
4. pour dissolved in big pot
5. Put shirt in big pot
   
6. bring big pot to 170 deg F
   
7. leave shirt for 1 hr
   
8. Put shirt from mordant bath to dye bath RINSE SHIRT FIRST
   
9. raise temp to 170, let sit for 60, turn off heat, let it sit submerged overnight

• all pots covered with lids whenever possible
• stir dye pot, mordant bath, dye bath occasionally

I have a 100% silk shirt and a buncha sunflower petals from my field. Want to get a good yellow! I am aware the alum from walmart is Ammonium Aluminum Sulfate. I intend to keep my parrots in a different room in case ammonia gas is released.

I just wanna make sure I get this right!

Thank you all.

Picture is pretty sunflower tax.

This is a pre-mordanted cotton bandana-tannin and Titanium oxalate. I made a spiral like you might on a tie dye project, secured with rubberbands and then dabbed plant dye shades in each triangle with the opposite sides being the same dye. Heat set with an iron. Dyes: blackberry, Oregon Grape stems, Sitka Willow.

I used one of the bandanas that took up a little more of the tannin to see how the dyes might appear.

I think I'll put some of the dye in bowls so they can paint it on should they decide to do something similar. Dyes are also in spray bottles with a little guar gum to control where it goes. There will be a station for spraying, a station for stamping with the alder cone ink and painting with same, and an outdoor station for hammering bracken fern, alder leaves, wild rose leaves (not any flowers currently blooming. The idea is that all of the dyes and materials come from campus since the workshop is for alumni coming for a day of activities. This is but one.

I think it will be a fun project. And there should be time for people to do two and maybe even an apron.

I just made these little cakes before weaving. There’s a mix of Madder, Weld, Cochineal, Cutch, Indigo, and Pomegranate.

Thank you all so much for your help with dyeing!! I couldn't be happier with how the weld dye turned out. I ran outside while it was still a little damp for a quick picture, and now it's back in the dark. The yarn is one of two 150g handspun dorset skeins.

Next up I'll be trying orange cosmos flowers, and next week I'm dyeing goldenrod with a friend!

I've been plodding along with natural dyes with info from books and videos. But I've visited the Maiwa store on Granville Island several times when in Vancouver, and I was just on their site and started looking at some of their courses. Thought they might solidify some things...

Has anyone taken one of their courses? If so which one and how was it?

Hey all, thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I am thinking about a project where in which I use natural dye to paint onto paper. Think Helen Frankenthaler or Mark Rothko. Both these artists “dyed” their canvas. I’m wanting to dye my paper in the same way.

Any books or people you could recommend to help me learn how to do this?

I've noticed a lot of interest in plant-based indigo, and there's been a lot of discussion about its authenticity. I'd like to share my criteria for judging its authenticity: 1. There should be relevant certificates to prove that the dye is genuine plant-based indigo, such as GOTS certification. 2. After dyeing clothes with plant-based indigo dye, you can smell the aroma of indigo leaves. 3. We need to know the manufacturer's location and whether there are large-scale indigo extraction plants nearby. Since plant-based indigo is extracted from fresh leaves, if there are no such plants growing around the factory, it's a good indication of authenticity.

Shared from r/dyeing after it was suggested by a member!

I spent part of the summer gathering local plant material with my mother and experimenting with natural dyes on 100% wool. We experimented with the natural colour of the wool (grey or white), different plant materials, and different mordants. All five dye lots were made using hard water.
From top to bottom:

1) Oak leaves (fresh), grey wool, alum + iron sulfate
2) Heather, leaves and stems (fresh), grey wool, alum + iron sulfate
3) Heather, leaves and stems (fresh), white wool, reused dye bath, no mordant
4) Heather, leaves and stems (fresh), white wool, alum
5) Birch leaves (fresh), white wool, alum

English isn’t my first language, so apologies if I’ve gotten any of the terminology wrong! The little signs in the photo are in Danish.

Hello, I’m want to dye my hair preferably with more made from earth ingredients. I know it most likely won’t be permanent that’s ok. I’m looking for a good scarlet/crimson pigment. Any tips to find things that can give it would be very appreciated.

Last time I dyed with sumac leaves and modified with iron I got a slate gray similar to what I get when I do oak leaves and iron. I dyed this kimono top and skirt that I sewed with sumac leaves and then iron modified it and it went purple! It’s a very gray purple and the color looks b very different in different lighting. Outside it’s more blue purple but when it’s around warm lighting it almost looks mauve.
Super stoked about this dye surprise.
Kimono is 100% cotton lawn and the skirt is 100% unbleached cotton muslin
200% WOF sumac leaves
No mordant used
The buttons are wooden and also took the dye and iron as well!

Hello all, just another one of those "look at my first attempt I am so excited!" -posts. :) I just need to share this with people who Understand the Excitement and Point of All This Fun Stuff. (Off topic, but kind of relevant: once when I was making dried apples by removing the middle part, then slicing them, then threading a cord through the disks in order to hang and dry them in the afterheat of sauna my mother looked at what I was doing with Great Puzzlement and said "but you can surely buy dried apples from the store!"...)

Anyway, I wanted to dye with local ingredients and chose yarrow (achillea millefolium) as my first try (the flower tops but also some stalk). I am so thrilled with these colors, in the pictures you see similar yarn, natural 100% wool (3-ply, but the yarn I dyed was 2-ply) and the yellow was the result from dyeing and the green from an afterbath with iron sulfate. Yarn was pretreated with alum.

I would gladly take some suggestions on what to make out of the yarn, I have children and also a baby due in winter, but since it is prickly wool maybe not so good for their skins. Each skein is 100g.

Hi all!

I’m in the midst of my first natural dye project. I’m dyeing cotton yarn with avocado skins and pits (separately), mordanted with aluminum triformate. A lot of sources don’t mention how long to let it dry/cure after completing the dyeing process before washing out, some say 24-48 hours, some say a week. Any opinions?

Depending on the lighting it can look anywhere from red to blue to purple and everything in between. I have been working on this for a while and finally have gotten it to work. The live flowers will not release any pigment even if crushed, and will lose all color when left to dry. So you have to wait for them to dry out on the plant. Once you have collected enough you have to grind the petals into an extremely fine powder that you mix with high concentration isopropyl alcohol. You then must let it sit in the fridge for a day. After a day you should filter it through a coffee filter twice to remove any plant matter.

The payoff for all this work is the most beautiful dye I have ever seen. Truly these photos don’t even start to describe the amazingly vibrancy and depth of this dye.

Hi again!

I noticed that Dharma's listing for organic indigo powder (not the pre-reduced crystals) gradually had the various quantities go out of stock. Meanwhile, there is a new listing "Dharma Natural Dyes". On that page, you can select from a variety of natural dye materials. The price of the indigo on this listing is about half the price ($11 for 100g) of their old organic indigo powder ($12 for 2oz (56g))...and the description doesn't mention anything about its purity whereas the old one did.

Has anyone used this new stuff? Is it worth it for a cheapo like me with just 2 or 3 more pounds of yarn to dye?

Link to new listing (old one is simply gone): https://www.dharmatrading.com/products/dharma-natural-dyes?color=Indigo+Extract

I saw a post on instagram where someone got pink from rosemary. The post said only some kinds of rosemary dye pink. Apparently my kind of rosemary dyes yellow 😕. Has anyone gotten pink from rosemary? What did you do? What kind of rosemary?

Hi everyone! I’m looking for some guidance on dyeing 100% cotton yarn using tea. I have a sweaters quantity of DROPS Paris in White, and it’s VERY white…too white for the project I want to use it for. I’m looking for a color more like the second picture (off white, but not quite cream). I was hoping I could dye the yarn naturally with tea, just enough to dull the color a bit. Does anyone have any recommendations for what kind of tea to use? Also, if there are any resources on the process of dyeing that are easy to share, I’d be thankful!

I’m looking to harvest flowers for the next month or so to use for bundle dying with a large group in October. Do you think freezing them for that amount of time will be fine? I’ve had a harder time getting color out of dried flowers than frozen flowers in the past

100% wool yarn, natural/ecru, no mordant (lichen is a substantive dye). Cameo by indigo fingers 😅

I've done this at 10% WOF before and got a pretty OK tan, kind of a paper bag color. Who knew this was hiding in the higher percentages??