Try Dyes
Everything is an experiment & nothing lasts forever
[except this plastic bowl]
there’s HEAPS of info out there, and countless methods of how to turn your food garbage into creatively hued textiles. i am by no means a master, but the beautiful thing about dying with natural materials is that it’s rarely permanent & more often than not results in a fun surprise!
click thru the links below to fully dive in, but if you want the cliff’s notes, the basic steps go like this:
Wash/scour fabric to be dyed
Pretreat fabric with a mordant
Prepare dye bath
Wet [&/or tie] fabric, add to dye bath
Boil for 15-20 mins, soak overnight
Rinse, heat dry
i’ve been playing around with natural dyes made from turmeric, beets, red cabbage [super fun!], onion skins, hibiscus petals, coffee, avo pits…so far, each has yielded varying degrees of success. the ones i wish held true wash away after one laundering, while i continue to accidentally botch most of my whites with tie-dyes of years past.
