Dyeing

Dyeing was a new experience for me and I approached it with some trepidation. I decided I wanted to try natural dyes and discovered there is a wide range of natural materials that can be used to colour textiles. Unfortunately not a wide range are available outside in January, in Nova Scotia.

I settled on two items I could access this time of year; red cabbage and turmeric. I am hoping at least one of these will work for me!

I then needed to find something to dye. Since natural fibres produce the most success in dyeing, I chose to focus on cotton fabrics. For small items to begin with, I decided to try dyeing some clothes for one of the Reality Works babies we use in Child Studies 9. These babies come with some clothes, but they are quite institutional looking I think. Therefore I sometimes purchase inexpensive baby clothes at Frenchy's to make our babies seem more real. For the purpose of this project, I bought some plain white baby clothes to dye. The hat and t-shirt are 100% cotton, and the pants are 95% cotton and 5% spandex. I will be interested to see if the small spandex content makes a difference in how well the dye takes. To be a bit bolder, I chose a plain skirt and tank top I had on hand that could be livened up by a colour change. The skirt is 95% cotton and 5% spandex and the tank top is 100% cotton, according to the labels.

 

Next I needed to find out how to go about the process of preparing and using natural dyes. Some internet research quickly had me overwhelmed! After quite a bit of exploring the topic, I opted to use some fairly simple instructions I found on the DIY Natural site.

I started by simmering the articles I wanted to dye in water and vinegar for about an hour, to act as a fixative and make the dye take better. Several sources had said to use vinegar as a fixative for plant dyes, and salt for berries. Hope vinegar is right for turmeric as well as cabbage!

I chopped up the cabbage, added about twice as much water and simmered the mixture for a little over an hour. It was a dark purple colour when done.









I then strained out the plant material and added the items I wanted to dye, the skirt, baby hat and pants, and put it back on the stove to simmer for another hour.







After an hour of simmering I turned off the stove. At this point I gave up on the skirt as it did not appear to have taken up any of the dye at all. Perhaps the fiber content was not really cotton as the label said, or the small amount of spandex messed it up? The original colour of the skirt may have been too dark to dye successfully. It is also possible my vinegar fixative was not appropriate. The fault may be with my red cabbage dye itself. Maybe it needed to simmer longer or had too much water in it. I left the baby pants and hat in longer, but it soon became obvious that they were not going to be very successful either. They changed colour a little, but were a not very satisfactory shade of pinkish purple when they first were removed from the dye and lost most of that after rinsing and washing. So, unfortunately, I would have to say my red cabbage dye was a failure. I will hope for better results from the turmeric dye.

For the turmeric I followed the directions found here, on the Crafting a Green World website. I simmered the turmeric in water for about 15 minutes.






I then added the tank top. I did the baby t-shirt separately in another batch. I let the top sit in the turmeric solution for about 30 minutes.









After removing the tank top from the turmeric solution and running it under cold water, it remained quite a satisfying shade of yellow! The baby t-shirt also turned out a good yellow. The colour stayed true after washing and drying. A much better result than the red cabbage.


















Before and After

The "new" yellow t-shirt looks great. Even the pants and hat are quite a pleasant beige colour now, though this seems like a fair amount of work to change a white garment to a light beige garment!

You would never know the skirt had been on a trip through a simmering pot of red cabbage dye, but I am happy with my new turmeric yellow tank top!



Resources for Dyeing (mainly natural)

All Natural Dyeing. (n.d.) The ultimate 2016 guide to natural dyeing. Retrieved from http://www.allnaturaldyeing.com/

Gardening Channel (n.d.) How to make and use natural dyes. Retrieved from http://www.gardeningchannel.com/making-using-natural-dye/

Majka, Tracy. (n.d.) An introduction to natural dyeing. Retrieved from https://www.seamwork.com/issues/2015/05/an-introduction-to-natural-dyeing

Martha Stewart. (2015) Dyeing fabrics: tips, tricks, and how-to's. Retrieved from http://www.marthastewart.com/1110589/fit-be-dyed

Maslowski, Debra. (n.d.) How to dye fabrics using natural materials. Retrieved from https://www.diynatural.com/natural-fabric-dyes/

Pioneer Thinking. (n.d.) Making natural dyes from plants. Retrieved from http://pioneerthinking.com/crafts/natural-dyes



Suggestions for Student Learning

If planning to actually dye things with students at school, my experience with trying natural dyes reminded me of an important teaching rule; make sure something works before trying with a class! When my red cabbage dye did not work well, I became a bit discouraged and was not thinking at that point that dyeing textiles was "fun." When my turmeric dye did work, my mood improved and I started enjoying the process again. If we want students to develop enthusiasm for things like dyeing, it would be good for their first experience to be successful. Failures will happen to us all as we continue to try new things, but if the first attempt is negative another attempt may never be undertaken. Therefore I would make sure I was comfortable and confident in whatever dye stuff and method I chose to use before sharing it with students. I used turmeric dye twice and got consistent results. This was also quite a fast and easy material to use for dyeing. I would recommend it as a good choice to use with students.

Realistically however, in Textile Arts 7 where there is often very limited time (I have each class for one hour a week for half a year), the opportunities to do things like dyeing might be limited. Therefore I am going to suggest an activity that is not really dyeing, but would give students an experience similar to resist dyeing. The activity involves taking some plain white aprons and adding colour to them. I did this with a group of students in the past and it worked quite well. First we used masking tape to create a design on the apron; we focused on words to promote healthy food preparation as these aprons were going to used in the Grade 8 Foods Lab. After taping, we just painted over the tape and surrounding area with acrylic paint. When the paint was dry, we removed the tape and the letters showed up. Though I know this is not really resist dyeing, it is fast and easy for Grade 7's and could help them understand the process of how resist dyeing would work. Below are a few examples of the aprons we created.