I looked into using natural dyes that could be found at home, to create a sustainable way of dyeing the cotton i want to use for the under 5s crochet structure. I came across a huge list of things such as red cabbage, turmaric, roses, onion skins, strawberries, beetroot, acorns, coffee and tea.
Here have experimented with red cabbage, boiling near enough a full cabbage for an hour produced a strong dark blue/purple colour.
I also bolled a few leaves from the cabbage in a seperate pan creating a weak lilac colour, this photograph shows the difference beween the two shades on a hank of cotton.
For this ball of yarn I dipped one half in the dark blue/purple and the other half in the lilac leaving a white area in the middle allowing the colours to blend together. This has created many other colours like the green areas, I love the way this has turned out! I'm excited to see how this looks once crocheted.
I later experimented with a bunch of dead flowers, mostly orange and yellow and also the stalks of the flowers all in one pan. This produced a peachy orange colour and also a lovely smell!
The bottom left of this yarn shows the colour created by the flowers. I didnt manage to get much dye from them as they just soaked up all the water.
A mixture of all the colours.
A selection of all the yarns I have created so far.
I want to continue experimenting with different fruits, vegtables and flowers such as strawberries, roses and onion skins to get a wider variety of colours to crochet with!
The process of creating these dyes was really simple and could be interesting to show the under 5's?
No comments:
Post a Comment