This post is written by Whitney of @whitneyknits.
Hey y’all! Today I’m excited to share with you a project I’ve been working on for the past few weeks: a naturally dyed Cleo skirt (Made by Rae pattern is in the shop) made from fabric I dyed in my kitchen with a couple of easy-to-find ingredients. Natural dyeing techniques have been practiced around the world for thousands of years, but they’ve recently exploded in popularity with crafters.
Avocado dyeing in particular is extremely trendy these days, creating tones ranging from a pale peachy-beige to a deep rosy pink.
For this project, I decided to experiment with four different fabrics from the Imagine Gnats shop (pictured clockwise from the top right):
- Double gauze in solid natural, by Kobayashi (also available in solid white). This 100% cotton fabric is lightweight, airy, and so soft.
- Dana cotton/modal jersey in ivory, by Robert Kaufman. This is a lightweight 55% cotton/45% modal jersey with 40% 4-way stretch, and it’s perfect for t-shirts, loungewear, and baby clothes.
- Brussels washer linen blend in PFD, by Robert Kaufman. This is a midweight fabric with excellent drape and a 55% linen/45% rayon composition.
- Stretch bull denim 9.5 oz in nearly white, by Cone Mills. This is a medium-weight stretch denim made in the USA from 94% cotton, 5% poly, and 1% spandex.
I knew right off the bat that I wanted to try the avocado dye that’s taken over my Instagram feed, but I also decided to try my hand at a turmeric dye bath because I needed that glowing sunshine in my life!
A week before dyeing, I mordanted all of my fabrics in a bucket of diluted soy milk, a process that helps the dye adhere to the fibers. For this step, I followed the instructions laid out in the book Botanical Colour at Your Fingertips, by Rebecca Desnos.
For the turmeric dye, I followed the steps described in The Natural Colors Cookbook, by Maggie Pate. Pate recommends a 1:1 dyestuff to fiber ratio for bright yellow and a 2:1 ratio for a deep orange. I was aiming for something in the middle, closer to a mustard shade, and ended up using 600 grams of ground turmeric for 480 g of fiber.
After heating the fabric in the prepared dye bath, I let it cool in the pot for 18 hours before rinsing.
For my avocado dye, I turned back to Botanical Colour at Your Fingertips. If you follow Rebecca Desnos on Instagram, you know she achieves the most stunning rosy pinks with her avocado dyes. It’s a long, slow process, but the results are completely worth it. I used a dyestuff to fiber ratio of approximately 2:1, which was about halfway between the recommendations of Desnos (0.5:1) and Pate (4:1).
After adding my fabric to the dye and heating it for the recommended amount of time, I let it cool in the pot for approximately 8 hours. The longer the fabric sits in the dye, the deeper your final shade will be. Desnos also recommends not rinsing your fabric for at least a week after dyeing, which is a real exercise in patience. I only managed to wait 2 days before washing my dyed fabric because I just couldn’t wait to get sewing!
As you can see from the swatches above, the 100% cotton double gauze achieved the most even, saturated tones for both turmeric and avocado dyes, while the Cone Mills stretch bull denim has the patchiest and least saturated color. This makes sense, given its poly content. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the Brussels washer linen and Dana cotton/modal jersey took the dyes, given that they both contain rayon.
All of these swatches have been machine washed once and air-dried, with the exception of the Brussels washer. Since I was planning to use it to make a garment, I wanted to get as much excess dye out of the fabric as I could before sewing, so it’s been machine washed twice (with 2 rinse cycles each time) and machine dried once.
One of my favorite go-to patterns for showing off a beautiful fabric is the Made by Rae Cleo skirt. I knew those adorable curved pockets of view A would give me the perfect opportunity to do a little color-blocking and show off the results of both of my dyes…I just wish I’d had enough fabric to do an avocado pink hem band as well!
(Pro tip: dye more fabric than you think you’ll need! The dyeing process involves heating your fabric to 180°F and leaving it there for ~1 hour, so shrinkage is inevitable.) I made a size 3, which corresponds to a 45″ waist and 53″ hip. However, the elastic back waist and gathered shape accommodate a much larger range of measurements (like my 50″ waist and 59″ hip).
Natural dyeing is a long, slow process, but in the end your patience is rewarded with rich, earthy tones that just can’t be achieved with synthetic dyes. I hope you’ve enjoyed following along with my little experiment with this naturally dyed Cleo skirt, and I’d love to know if you decide to try dyeing fabric too! Thanks for reading!