You can use rainwater if you like, especially if you find your tap water is influencing your colors negatively. Natural dyes do use a lot of water–for prepping your fibres, creating dye baths, and rinsing finished yarns. If you’d like to use an upcycled crock pot, you will not need the stock pot, but it will need to stay fully dedicated to natural dyeing as dyes are not food safe. This could be your at-home stove with good ventilation, a hot plate, a propane burner or even a crock pot. Dedicated tools: measuring cup, spoon for stirring.If you only have one, you will need to mordant the yarn overnight, strain and wash the pot, then prepare the dye in the same pot, re-wetting the yarn and adding it to the dye bath on the 3rd day of the process, instead of being able to do both the dye prep and mordanting on day 1. This should be big enough to hold 1-2, 100 g skeins of yarn, covered in water and fully submerged with room to move around. 1-2 large stainless steel or aluminum soup pots or stock pots.Remember, anything you use for natural dyeing must not be used again for food or food prep at any time, and you’ll want to store it separately to avoid any cross-contamination. How to Naturally Dye Wool with Onion Skins Materialsįor this dye experiment, you’ll want the following materials on hand. When using onion skins and adding iron, the yellows have the potential to shift into olive and sage greens. A modifier in natural dyeing is an additive that shifts the color of the dye good in an entirely new direction. To illustrate the variety possible with our onion skins, I’ve dyed two skeins and then modified one of the skeins with iron modifier. This is a lower ratio than many natural dye baths, and speaks to how concentrated in color the skins actually are! While I was able to get some soft yellows and sage greens that felt very spring-like for this article, increasing your concentration can yield intense, beautiful golden yellows. Usually, I don’t have enough skins of both colors to fill a full dye bath, so I combine them.įor this experiment, I used approximately ¼ weight of fibre in onion skins. You can separate out the red skins and lighter color ones into two different storage containers if you’ve got enough of them–the red skins make deeper greens and more caramel tones, while you white and yellow onion skins will lean towards brighter yellows. I usually plan to do 1-2 onion skin dye days a year (one in spring, one in fall) and spend the summer and winter gathering skins from each onion we cook with. If you aren’t planning on making a big batch of French Onion soup, you’ll need to collect your onion skins over time. Sometimes, combining undyed wool yarnswith fantastic, natural color is as simple as looking in your kitchen! Many compost-ready food castings actually contain quite a bit of natural color: avocado pits and skins, coffee and black tea, and perhaps one of the most surprising–onion skins! Yellow or red, the glossy skins from an everyday onion make one of the most concentrated and versatile natural dyes. Keep the eggs refrigerated until ready to eat, up to one week.2 Leave your dye bath overnight to fully develop. Polish with olive oil: When the eggs are dry and cool enough to handle, use a few drops of olive oil and a paper towel to polish them up.Remove and dry: Remove the eggs from the dye with the slotted spoon and allow to cool on a wire rack.The longer they soak, the darker they will be. Soak the eggs: Let the eggs soak in the dye for at least 30 minutes, or up to one hour.Nudge them into place so the liquid is covering all of the eggs, topping off with a little bit of water if necessary. ![]() Add the eggs: Use a slotted spoon to gently lower the eggs into the dye.It doesn’t have to be cold, just below 160✯ or so, so you don’t keep cooking the eggs. ![]()
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