After a short-lived pity party, I decided to dye two of the dresses and give them to my daughters. The tea-stain worked well as expected, as I've done this several times now. No sign of any spot on that one. I looked in the frig and opted to give blueberries a try for the other. Glad I did. Only about 2-3 minutes in the dye bath resulted in a lovely lavender with a hint of grey that was a hit with both girls.

My method: Combine approx. 1 cup mashed blueberries with 8 cups water. Bring to a boil. Simmer 10-15 minutes. Strain to remove skins and other undesirables. Submerge pre-washed, wet fabric in the dye bath - for only a few minutes in this case. Rinse well in cold water and set color with vinegar.
I don't know if vinegar is an effective way to set berry dye for the long term, but the dress has already been washed once and seems to have retained its color. No bleed onto the tea-stained dress in the same load either. I'm wondering about preparing a mordant bath (salt-based maybe?) to "prepare" the fabric to accept the dye. Maybe this would help set the color as well. Just something to consider down the line. For the time being I'm not so interested in dyeing my fabrics. I've got some tea-stained fabric from earlier projects that I am using up now for pencil/craft rolls, but no current dye plans for Spool + Sparrow goods. My daughters, however, are eager to begin more experimentation with a variety of plants and foods. They eat up this sort of project!
No comments:
Post a Comment