DIY Natural Dyeing
When boiling vegetables for various dishes you are preparing, vegetables will release pigments into the hot water, which can be repurposed into dye after boiling. This is a great way to be zero-waste, as you are using the dye from boiling the vegetable instead of throwing it out. Using natural dyes are low-cost as they come from your produce. Various vegetables produce various colors. While the colors may be very bright in the water, they will show up muted in your fabric, especially if you dilute with water.
Color Chart:
Note : You can find more vegetables through a google search.
Source: YumUniverse
Steps:
- After removing the vegetables that you boiled, place white fabric into hot dye.
- Let the water and fabric reach boiling point and monitor. Once it has been reached, reduce to a simmer and cover. Let fabric sit for an hour, periodically checking it.
- Some recipes call for adding salt or white vinegar to help set the dye into the fabric. This is optional!
- After an hour, turn off. Keep fabric in the pot overnight.
- Next day, let the fabric air dry. Do not wash with cold or hot water, just squeeze excess water out.
- Once the fabric has dried, iron the fabric to heat, set the pigment, once this is done you can rinse the fabric with hot water. Then wash if needed.
I used red beets to make a delicious beet soup, then used the dye to dye an old shirt that had a coffee stain. This is how my fabric dye turned out. While the color is not very strong, I can no longer see the stain and I really like the resulting color.
