Anyways, this was so crazy easy, and looks pretty amazing. Seriously, I think I've spent more time watering my pathetic garden this week than dealing with this, that's how little time it takes. Here's what I did, and hopefully it works for you!
1) Applied an alum mordant ahead of time. Maybe I'll actually outline that separately, because there was a bunch of ratios involved, and I think it would be helpful to post, because a lot of the resources I found were incomplete.
2) Bought about a cup and a half of black beans, added water and let them soak overnight (this was for about 150g of cotton fabric. I was very inexact with those ratios, but it seemed to turn out ok!)
3) In the morning, I strained the bean water into a second bucket (read: old IKEA trash bin) and added my fabric. I added more water to the beans.
4) I did the same thing that evening, adding the bean water into the fabric bucket and adding clean water to the beans.
5) Repeat step 3 & 4 the next day
6) The next morning (so the fabric had been soaking for 48 hours), I removed the fabric, rinsed it well, and hung it to dry. That's it!
So: soak beans, add new bean water to fabric every 12 hours for a total of 2 days soaking time. I assume if you used more beans, or left the fabric longer you might get more saturated shades. I took one piece out the after 36 hours soaking to see what would happen, and it is slightly lighter.
Hope that helps someone with their dyeing!
what a lovely shade of blue! if you're on a natural dyeing streak, try onion skins. they're always readily available :) (fennel fronds, too!)
ReplyDeleteonion skins (both red and white) and avocado are on my schedule next. super excited!
Deletea-mazing. i love it! the colour is so fantastic! <3
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing! The color is so beautiful! I can't wait to try this out and also to see what your cabbage dye will look like!
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