Sunday, April 9, 2023

Happy Easter! Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs!

 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.  

 

The one green/gray one is due to dyeing it with turmeric for a couple of hours and then throwing it in the cabbage dye overnight.  

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.