Using Plants to Dye Fabric

From taking a Sustainable Textiles course, I learned that it was possible to dye fabrics using natural materials.

I was so fascinated with this that I wanted to attempt dyeing fabrics at home. I used raspberries, earl grey tea, hibiscus tea, paprika spice, and chili powder.

Before I started to dye my organic cotton and linen, I had to boil my samples in salt and water and let them cool before I could start boiling the fabric in the natural dye. This process makes the dye stick to the fabric.

The most challenging part I faced was dyeing in small batches of fabric. This was hard because it was tough to ensure that the dye would be evenly spread across the fabric. Many of my fabric samples dried with a tie dye appearance rather than the color even throughout the sample.

The dyes that produced the strongest colors were the samples that were dyed in earl grey tea and hibiscus tea.