Natural dyes in the kitchen.

You can create lots of colour from food waste and other things than you can often find lurking in the back of your kitchen cupboard! This post shares details of a few natural dyes you can easily explore - no foraging required!

Of course, this is by no means a complete list of food dyes but a few suggestions to experiment with! Don’t forget your fabric will need to be prepared before you dye to help with colour and wash fastness! You can read about mordants and preparing your fibre in a previous post here.

Avocado skins and pits

This superfood is also a super source of dye! Subtle tan shades all the way to pretty rose pinks can be achieved with this dyestuff. Ask your friends and neighbours to save their skins and pits for you as quite a few are needed to extract a good pigment!

Beetroot

This vegetable has stained many tea towels across the land so it’s not much of a surprise to find it on this list, producing pretty pinks and shades of red!

Tea and coffee

An easy and relatively cheap natural dye for creating, you guessed it, tans and browns!

Onion skins

I LOVE onion skins! The paper-like outer that goes into the food waste bin is a super natural dye, full of pigment, and a little can go a long way! Yellow onion skins will give yellow through to orange whilst red onion skins will give pinks, purples and even greens!

Turmeric

I know this is lurking in your spice rack staining your chopping board! A great source for bright sunny yellows!

Have some fun experimenting with what’s in your cupboards. You can try overdyeing too to create new shades, just remember to always dye the lighter colour first, basic colour mixing rules apply.

Happy dyeing!

Zowie x