Natural Dyes: Red Onions, Nettles, Tea and Blackberries

I’m currently working on a project for my textiles degree where I need to dye small amounts of fabric and roving with natural dyes.

I have tried dyeing with plant material before with limited success, and it was the right time to give it another go!

Yet more research on the internet means that I know more now than I did, and it seems to me that there is no one right way.

This suits me just fine. I’m not great at following instructions, and I like to try things out and experiment a bit.

Two things were clear from what I found out. Firstly, it’s a good idea to heat the stuff you’re using to make the dye, then when it is cooled, fish out the plant bits, pop the fabric in and reheat it for a bit, before leaving it to cool in the dye.

Heating the dye slowly means that its also possible to dye rovings and wool yarn. Wet felting and laundry disasters have taught me that hot water and wool result in felt, which is fine if that is what you want, but not so fine if it is your favourite jumper!

The advice all says that when you are using natural dyes, it is best to use different pans than the ones you use for cooking, and I would say this is very good advice. It is never a good idea to put things in pans used for cooking that might be poisonous. However, as we have an induction hob and hubby has repeatedly told me that the right pans are expensive, I didn’t want to buy new pans for something I’m probably not going to do that often.

So instead, I used things that I knew were not poisonous and can be eaten, and would therefore be alright cooked up in pan for a couple of hours.

I used blackberries (officially a stain and not a dye, but I don’t know what the difference is!) tea (it said green on the packet but you’ll see the results in the minute and, spoiler alert, it’s not green!), red onion skins and nettles.

This is What I Did…

I didn’t bother with mordanting as I have no plans to wash any of the things I have dyed. Mordanting is a process that adds protein to plant fibres, which helps to make the dyes more permanent. In the past I have used soya milk.

So I threw the onion skins, nettles, blackberries and teabags into different pans and let them simmer away for an hour or so.

Then I left them overnight. The following day, I removed the skins etc, then added the fabric and the rovings. I let it simmer all for another hour or so, then left it overnight again.

I’m pleased to report that having cooked dinner since in the same pans, none of us were ill! So I’ll say it once more: it’s probably alright if you’d eat the things you’re making the dye out of.

Once the fabric and the rovings had spent what I thought was probably long enough in the dyes, I gave them a quick rinse in cold water.

The Results

The onion skins yielded a lovely pink colour on the muslin and the calico. Interestingly, the organza became a golden yellow, which I wasn’t expecting. The rovings were somewhere in between.

The things dyed in green tea were also pink. The tea had added raspberries, which might be why the results were pink, not green.

The blackberry ones were my favourite. It stayed pinky purple on the organza and the rovings, but faded to a lovely shade of lavender on the organza and the calico.

The nettle dyed things were patchy, with some peculiar darker areas. It’s proving to be difficult to find out exactly why this happened, and I’m blaming a preoccupation with perfection, and people not wanting to share mistakes or things that haven’t worked properly.

One explanation could be that the nettle dye reacted with the iron pan and the fabric got in the way. Whatever it is, I don’t mind because I don’t need a perfectly even colour for what I want to do. I’m planning to felt into the fabric, embroider and distress it a bit before joining the patches together in some way, so weird marks could actually be useful!

Here are some more pictures of those lovely colours.

Have you tried dyeing with natural dyes? How did it go? If you want to, you could leave a comment below, or on Facebook 🙂