Inspired by the New Year and a long summer with time to get crafty, we decided to learn more about Eco Dyeing and to encourage you to do the same too. It's suitable for kids of all ages, and I even thought it would be a fun activity for a baby shower - eco dyeing muslin wraps or little onesies.
Here is your How to ~
Decide what you are going to dye; we used two muslin wraps, one an un-dyed cream colour, the other we had previously dyed with cutch, to give it a coral pink colour. Both had been scoured and mordanted earlier.
To scour wash your chosen material with a ph neutral detergent, this can be done in a large pot or in your washing machine. While still wet or damp mordant your fabric, we use alum - available at the
Hand Craft Store, it is easy to use and safe. Fill a large pot with water, in a small jar add your alum - use 10g of alum per 100g of fabric. Add boiling water to the jar and mix the alum until it is nothing more then liquid, then stir it into the large pot of water and add your fabric. Mordanting is important, as it fixes the colour molecules to the fabric, so the print and colours remain through washes and exposure to light. If mordanting sounds a bit hard to you or to much effort, use only tannin rich plants and objects to dye, like avocado pits and skins, leaves, seeds and bark from oaks, eucalyptus, or willows. The tannin acts like a mordant. Before eco dyeing soak your chosen textile in a big pot of water as the textile needs to be wet/damp when eco dyed.
Next.. foraging. The area and season when you gather will determine colours and shades. Dye plants will yield the best results and chances are, you will find some of these plants already in your garden or neighbourhood; marigold, sunflowers, eucalyptus, madder, woad etc. Do note fruit/food plants like blueberries, onions, cabbage and beets will work and produce bright colours but as a dye they aren't colour fast, meaning the colour will fade with every wash. If you don't recognise any dye plants there is no harm in experimenting with what you can find in your back yard, try barks, leaves, flowers, seeds, stems, buds and roots sometimes they give the best surprises. These objects of nature can be used both fresh and dry.
Lay your muslin or textile out on a large flat space, and take time to place your collection of nature onto only half of it. We tried to lay out the pieces equally, but you could try to make a shape, play with symmetry, go for a minimalist look or throw it all on there, get creative and have a bit of fun with it. We used eucalyptus leaves and bark which can give reds/browns, marigold - yellow, lichens - colours vary from yellow to purple, weld flowers - yellow, avocado pits - pinks, harakeke/NZ flax flowers - browns and yellows and we had some indigo powder which I sprinkled on the coral muslin. For natural dye powders and ready to use dyes in NZ, again the
Hand Craft Store in Christchurch is good.
Once done, spray with water. Fold the fabric with no plant material onto the top of your creation, so that the plant material is sandwiched in between two layers of material. Then starting at one end, roll the fabric and everything in it all the way to the other end. It is important this is a tight roll - 4 hands help. Fold this in half again and wrap string around it to hold it in place.
Another spray of water and it's good to go in the steamer (there are other techniques if you don't have a steamer available). Fill the bottom pot with water, making sure it doesn't touch the steaming basket, place your muslin or fabric in the steaming basket, turn on low and leave for around 3 hours. Once the time is up, turn element off and leave your eco dyed bundle in there until it is at room temperature. Then move it into a bucket or pot.
Let the muslins sit for at least 3 days to give the plant cells time to release their colours, any longer and you risk mould growing. The longer you leave them, the deeper the hue and colour.
Open up when you can wait no longer, empty it of objects and give it a wash (we use eco friendly, ph neutral detergent) and then enjoy your very own piece, hand dyed with the colours of nature.
