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This post has been a long time coming, I’ve been wanting to try my hand at naturally dyeing fibers for a while and this weekend I finally tried naturally dyeing with avocados.
I’ve been really trying to make our home and overall lifestyle more eco-conscious. We eat a lot of avocados in our house so I decided to start naturally dyeing with avocados.
But there are numerous other food scraps and natural materials you can use to naturally dye at home.
The process is really simple, and depending on the method you use you can get a range of hues. Avocados specifically have a color range of pinks to browns.
Every time I research how to make natural dyes or how to dye with avocados I always seem to see a large range of hues, not just one shade of pink.
However, a lot of the time I’m not able to find the specific method someone used to get that particular shade, and that’s a bit frustrating.
So I decided I would test out a few different methods and break it all down for you guys. Step by step.
Since I’m trying to be as thorough as possible with you guys I had to break this avocado dyeing process into more than one post. Each going through specifically what I did so you can replicate it yourself. This post will explain the first process.
I’m going to take you step-by-step through the process I used and the finished results.
What You Need:
- Avocados
- Pot of water
- Vinegar
- Baking Soda
- Mason jars (or other containers)
- Fiber for dyeing
Choosing Your fiber
You can use pretty much any natural fiber to start dyeing with avocados. I’ve chosen to dye two simple white cotton fabrics because I had just bought fabric to make more of my DIY cloth napkins, hankies, and hand towels.
You can also use yarn, thread, wool, or whatever other fiber you may have. The two fabrics I used were white cotton linen and the other is a 100% white cotton gauze (add affiliate link to fabric).
Keep in mind that there are a lot of factors that go into the resulting color when choosing to naturally dye fibers. This includes the kind of fiber you use.
So although I’m going to be as specific as possible for ya’ll, if you use a different fiber just know your colors may vary a little.
The Dyeing Process
Okay, let’s get down to the step-by-step process of naturally dyeing with avocados!
Step 1: Clean and Store. The better you clean your avocados and skins the purer pink hues you’ll get. Before storing be sure to clean off as much flesh from your avocado scraps as you can. You’re going to need to have a decent amount of avocado skins and/or stones to dye your fibers. As you’re collecting them you can store it two ways, on a dry window sill or sunny place or store in your freezer until you have enough and are ready to use.
Step 2: Fill your pot and heat your water. Fill whatever pot you’re choosing to use with water. Bring your water to a boil.
Step 3: Prep your mason jars. While you’re waiting for your water to boil prep your mason jars and label them accordingly. Adding your avocado scraps and fiber of choice and any other ingredients. (I’ll elaborate below).
Step 4: Soak and wait. Once your water has boiled pour it into each of your mason jars with your fiber already in it and set aside to soak.
Step 5: Remove, rinse, and dry. Once you’ve reached your desired color remove your fiber from the dye water and rinse your fiber thoroughly with warm or cool water until the water looks clear. Set aside to dry off.
Special Notes
For consistency, each swatch test group got 1 ½ cups of water. There were three swatch group categories. Fiber with stones/skins and 1 Tbls. of baking soda, fiber with stones/skins only, and fiber with stones/skins and ¼ cup of vinegar.
Additionally, each category was tested with either, 1 ½ stone, 2 skins with flesh, or 2 skins without flesh. All were also soaking for the same amount of time in the avocado scraps for several days.
I chose to include baking soda and vinegar in this test because I had seen them used in other natural dyes, but hadn’t seen it used in avocado dyeing before.
Swatch Group 1: Fiber with Baking Soda
As you can see the swatch group that ended up having the deepest shade was the one containing baking soda. I expected the color to be pinker because this is what many people had experienced. Instead, all swatches resulted in an earthy peach hue.
I believe this was caused because I chose to boil the water separately from the avocado scraps and then pour it into the jars containing the avocado and letting it sit. Rather than boiling it all together.
Many people will say a common cause for a brown color will be from not cleaning your skins well enough.
However, I tested skins without flesh and skins with flesh and both had similar coloring as well as the swatches with the stones.
Swatch Group 2: Fiber with Stones/Skins Only
The swatches that contained neither baking soda nor vinegar had the cleanest or most obvious peach tone. The Baking soda group had a much deeper color almost brown.
While the swatches with the avocado scraps alone, although not as vibrant appeared more peach or cream-colored.
Swatch Group 3: Fiber with Vinegar
What was really surprising to me was how the avocado scraps reacted to the vinegar. In other natural dyeing, the use of vinegar has produced a more vibrant color.
This was not the case for avocados, the vinegar almost neutralized the avocados completely. After several days of soaking the group containing vinegar had a very subtle peach tint in all swatches, hardly noticeable at all.
I hope you found this post helpful if you have any questions on the process leave it in the comments!
Stay tuned for my next post on another method of naturally dyeing with avocados.
If you try this method out leave a comment or tag me on Instagram @heatherpaigeblog to show me how it turned out for you!
Thanks for stopping by!
XXXX Heather Paige
