Natural dyes with fruits and vegetables
- by Anna Sattler (RSS feed) on Dec 31st 2007 5:00PM
- Filed under in the kitchen, kids, knitting and crochet
Yarn comes in many beautiful colors, weights and textures. Sometimes, you can go to every single craft store and still not find the perfect color that you need. If you are having a difficult time finding the perfect color, you can dye your own with fruit and vegetables.Fruits and vegetables that stain, such as onion skins, grape juice, and beets make very pretty dye, and yarn dyeing is a fun and easy craft that kids can help with. Lion Brand Yarn has tips and recipes using various fruits and vegetables and wool and cotton yarn. You need stainless steel pots, yarn of course, a timer, tongs to handle the yarn, and of course, a stove. the kids can help with the coloring, but adult supervision is needed around the boiling water.
It is amazing to me how the different yarn produced different color results. I would have loved to see strawberries make the list because I think the color results would be perfect for making baby blankets for a special new baby girl.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-01-2008 @ 3:34AM
M.E. Williams said...
Strawberry might not work... IIRC, it just goes brownish (kind of like grapes do, only less intense). Cranberry might be better? I'm not sure! I remember reading a webpage years ago about a woman who dyed a silk shawl or scarf with a bag full of cranberries and other botanicals.
Ppl who try this should be advised that vegetable dyes are almost always less intense than modern chemical dyes... you won't get much clarity or brightness, but they're good if you like soft tones.
Indigo is probably the most notable exception, but I don't think most people have ready access to that plant, and I'm not sure what you have to do to it to dye with it, if anything.
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