Natural Dye: Working with Marigolds and Onion Skins

I’ve started attending a parent/child class with my daughter, and I wanted to share some great ideas that I’m learning from the teacher and other moms that attend. One part of the class is doing a craft with the kids.  The class just started so we haven’t done a ton of crafts yet, but what I’ve seen from what the kids have done in previous years, these aren’t just lame “glue some pasta to some paper” projects. The first one we did was learn to dye silks and wool from onion skins and marigold petals.

You first have to harvest the marigolds and pull off just the yellow parts of the plant.  Be careful not to add the darker colored seed that you see at the bottom of the middle petals.  That will create an awkward splotch of color that you may not want on your silk.  We placed the petals on some cheese cloth so that we could bundle them up and add to a crock pot of warm water.

This time we added 2 cheese clothes full of petals.  There is no strict recipe for this – you kind of add as many as you want for as dark of a color as you want.  These two bundles were added to some already made dye – in attempts to make it even darker.  Let it stew for a good half hour or so to make sure the pigment gets into the water.

Then add some Alum, which is a mordant added to make the color permanent.  If you have a large crockpot, add 3 tablespoons, or 2 tablespoons for smaller crockpots.

I first rinsed my silk in the sink and then put it in the colored warm water that was already heated in the crockpot.  Again, there is no set time in how long you leave it in there for.  I left mine in for about a half-hour, but you could leave it longer if you want a deeper color. When you pull it out, rinse it again.  Then you can iron it dry which also helps set the color so it won’t fade.

Here is my finished product.  Isn’t that a great color??

There was another pot that day with white onion skins in it that made a nice light orange color.  We recently attempted red onion skins and were all surprised that the silk came out green!

This can be done with wool as well.  The dye doesn’t seem to stay as well in cotton fabrics.  You could also try making the dye with numerous plants, such as sumac, lavender, beets, yarrow, and more.  For a great list of what color you can get from plants, check out this site!

So grab some plants with your kids, a crockpot, some silk or wool, and go for it!  The silks are fun for dress up, or as a landscape with some toys.

If anyone attempts this, let me know and I’ll put up some pictures of your projects on a future post.  🙂