Natural Elderberry Dye (on organic cotton undergarments)

Remember how I was cooking down elderberries the other week? I used most of the elderberries I had growing in the medicinal recipe I put in the freezer... but one little bunch was left on the bush and I wanted to experiment with using it as a dye on some organic cotton undergarments (wife beater undershirt & thong panties) that I got from American Apparel's organic section online.

The undergarments were un-dyed to begin with, just the natural organic cotton color which is a slightly off white. (For those of you with MCS { chem sensitivities} I found that these undies were not overly chemical smelling, and that AA is doing a fairly good job with their organic line. The smell they did hold washed out really easy for me.)

HOW TO ::::

I believe there are various ways to prepare the elderberry dye - but what I did this time was cook it down with a lil' bit of apple cider vinegar and then let the cotton clothing sit in the dye bath overnight.

I am pretty certain you can get a MUCH darker color from this if you have tons of elderberries (which I didn't have anymore). Also, i think for a blue/ purple color that is dark possibly not cooking them at all, but crushing them up into a liquid, adding the vinegar and then putting the garments in would be really awesome, and likely a very deep dye.

I hung them out in the sun to dry, and as with all natural dyes the color will lighten as the fabric dries. This small amount of elderberries made a nice shade of pink... that leans on the lavender side.

Pretty earthy & cool!

Xoxoxo

Nature DIY Part 1: Poke Berry Paint and Dye

Poke Berries are a deep purple blackish colored berry growing on the Poke Weed which are totally beautiful and totally poisonous berries. I would not use them for dying clothing, but today I wanted to dye my hemp shower curtain and when I realized it was making an awesome magenta color dye, I made another thicker batch for paint!

This pic above shows you what the Poke Berry looks like, I cut about 10-15 bunches like this to gather enough pigment for the dye.
I was rather lazy about the dying process this time (unlike my last post with plum skins, which I did completely following directions) - I dropped the poke berries in the (not for food) pot, filled up enough water to fit the fabric in, then added about a half cup of kosher salt.
After bringing this concoction to a boil, I let it simmer and set for about 30 minutes (the longer it simmers the better your dye will be). I then added the 100% hemp fabric for my shower curtain to the Poke Berry dye! Check out the rad color!
I then realized this would make a awesome watercolor paint, so I gathered about 7 more bunches of poke berries and added them to the old poke berries from the dye to be boiled again with only a small amount of water. (The hemp fabric & dye had been poured into another bucket.) Now if you are loving the Poke paint, but are like WTF? about my paint brush in the pic above... that is because I made the paint brushes too- which I will tell ya'll about in Part 2 Nature DIY~!!!
Just like traditional watercolors you can get variations of pigment by adding water to the thicker Poke Berry paint, which I tried to illustrate in my quick & somewhat creepy flying shark sperm shaped monster pet with eggs painting. :)

Do you use natural paints? Have you ever experimented with henna or mud painting? Please share your secrets here!

DIY: Making Natural Non Toxic Dye

This week I have been spending a good deal of time in the kitchen, cooking up natural dyes. I am actually surprised that after 7 years of art in college I had never learned to make paints, toxic or non toxic. But after reading an awesome post on Crafting a Green World about how to make your own milk paint, I got to thinking even deeper into how to make pigments since the colored pigment can be as toxic as the binder. What I found out was a creative revelation that I can not stop cooking up! My personal criteria for creating pigment/dye is this:
* It can not be toxic in any way, even if the substance is natural.
* It has to be in abundance and easily gathered in nature (don't ever take so much that the plant can't survive or make seeds.)
I totally hit the jack pot when I walked outside to find that my landlady next door has a plum tree with a gazillion plums that had already fallen to the ground and were being eaten by bugs, rotting, fermenting, gushy ect......
My dye experiment begins....

I began by skinning the plums and using only the dark burgundy red skins - I left the fruit for the wild critters, and kept the seeds and planted them - in hopes to grow some of my own plum trees.

The supplies you'll need to make your own fabric dye are as follows: water (filtered or spring is best) salt or vinegar, spare pot not used for cooking, something to measure with if you like to get things exact.

I used salt as a dye fixative, since I was using fruit, but if you are making your dye from flowers, leaves, plants etc - then it is suggested to use vinegar.

The recipe I found was SALT: 1/2 CUP SALT TO 8 CUPS COLD WATER, VINEGAR: 4 PARTS COLD WATER TO 1 PART VINEGAR.

I simmered my fabric in the salt fixative for approx. 1 hour, then rinsed and rung out - before putting the fabric in the dye.

Once the fabric had the fix in it, I went ahead and dumped the plum skins in some fresh water and simmered those for a while. It was so amazing how red and beautiful the water turned right away...

I strained out the skins and returned the dye to the pot and then start dipping the locally woven organic cotton into the plum dye! How freakin' awesome, cause it started turning almost hot pink right away and stuck right to the fabric.Then I let the fabric simmer lightly in the dye for a richer color for about an hour, all steamy, hot and sooooo pretty!

I allowed the fabric to sit in the dye overnight to make sure it had the darkest outcome possible since when it is rinsed and dried the color will be alot lighter.

I hung it to dry in the sun, until the rain came and I moved it to this window....

Isn't it pretty in pink? All that from a couple discarded plums! Yay! It's really easier then it looks and the whole process was so relaxing and fun. There are fantastic lists of natural stuff you can use for dye in just about every cool shade of color you can imagine. Go to http://www.pioneerthinking.com/ for a complete list of plants, berries, nuts and bark that can make a rainbow of fun, safe colors. Plus get more detailed instructions-a simple google search for "make your own natural dye" turns up tons of recipes for a wide variety of colors.