I've been slowly getting into natural dyeing for years now. This year, I wanted to naturally dye the Easter eggs. After looking at a few different options, I went with Turmeric for yellow and purple cabbage for blue.
Yellow Dye Recipe:
- Two heaping spoons of tumeric
- A couple of cups of water
- About 1/4 cup of white vinegar
I put this all on a glass bowl and mixed it up. I didn't heat up the mixture (which may have made it quicker but eh). Really, I just put the hard boiled eggs in the mix and left them in the fridge (with a lid) overnight.
Blue Dye Recipe:
- Half a head of purple cabbage
- A couple of cups of water
- another 1/4 cup of white vinegar
Just rip up the cabbage leaves or chop them and thrown them into a pot. Add in the water and once, the water is boiling, set it to simmer for 15 minutes. I accidentally used too much water (4 cups) and while it worked, I think it would have been slightly quicker to dye if I hadn't used so much water.
Once it's boiled, the leaved will be a pale purple with a lot of green. It was really amusing to see. Just gather up the purple water and add the white vinegar to that for your dye bath. I left the eggs in the dye bath overnight (glass bowl with the lid) to get the indigo color.
I was hoping for a bright green with the cross dyed one but oh well. It was a fun experiment. The nice thing is that purple cabbage was known in the Middle Ages. I need to see if I can find a recipe or mention of using it as a dye as this does seem to work well and is easy to accomplish for a pretty decent blue.