Plant Dying

Some friends of mine have been having a great time with plant dying wool and cotton and I've been itching to try it myself for quite awhile now. Although I was envious of the beautiful results they were getting, it sounded like an overwhelming (not to mention, MESSY!) kind of project, so I had been putting it off trying it out myself for weeks. However, last weekend I took the plunge with my trusty sidekicks Sce and Morgan and although I had some minor problems I think it's safe to say we were all extremely happy with the results!

We all decided to order a bunch of plain playsilks from Dharma Trading along with wool felt from JoAnnes. In order for the dye to "stick" to your materials and not wash out, you have to mordant everything first. We all basically followed the directions on my friend Jeannie's blog. Once everything was prepared and ready, we decided to try the following dyes:

Turmeric - Super easy to use, just dump a couple tablespoons in a big pot of boiling water, add wool/cotton, and boil for about twenty minutes.

Onion Skins - We boiled yellow onion skins for about twenty minutes, and then added our wool and boiled until we got the color we wanted (about 20-30 minutes)

Black beans - Just soaked the beans over night and then we used the soak water the next day. Very easy and didn't even have to boil!

Brazil Wood - This I had to order online. We boiled the wood in a big pot for twenty minutes and then left the wool/silks in over night (although we also did some quick dips and got a really cool pink color!)

Here are the results:


Adding turmeric to water


Playsilk coming out of turmeric


Playsilks soaking in brazil wood


Adding wool to bean dye - My 1oo% wool felt did not hold the bean dye color at all, but the wool blend felt and the playsilks turned out great.


Sce dipped half of her playsilk in the brazil wood and the other half in bean water


On the left you can see the awesome colors we got from the bean water. The lone greenish playsilk in the middle is a mixture of the turmeric and bean water, which turned out a beautiful sage color when it finished drying. The silks and wool on the right are all done with turmeric.


Although the brazil wood turned some of the playsilks and wool a deep red color, mine came out orange and pink! We're not sure if it's because we did something different during the preparation or if some of the brazil wood was cooked longer, but no matter. Everything turned out beautiful as you can see and we're all looking forward to another dying session soon! :D