Natural Tie Dye. Make from ingredients in your own Kitchen!

On this occasion, we’ll introduce the real fun of Natural Tie Dye where I’ll share some recipes and dye techniques that won’t harm your health nor the environment. 

Make your Natural Tie Dye Shirts and Fabric with ingredients you already have at home and achieve amazing and vibrant colors naturally.

Get the fruits and vegetables out of your fridge and let’s do this summer project!

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This tie dye style in clothes and garments became fashionable during the hippie era in the 70s and came back to dominate the streets in the 90s with their multicolored shirts.

Now we can’t stop seeing it on social media adapting to the loungewear trends of the moment (joggers, hoodies, leggings)…

The most interesting about this print is that you can do it yourself at home. 

But if you work with chemical dyes you’ll end up inhaling vapors and possibly exposing you to dangerous toxins besides water contamination.

The garments are articles that are closest to your body and that’s why it’s important to remark why you should use natural dyes for projects of natural tie dye.

Today I will show you how to make natural tie dye with turmeric and with blueberries. These two colors will give us fantastic and vibrant yellow and blue colors.

Are you interested yet?

How do you make homemade tie dye?

There are a lot of ingredients you can use to dye your fabrics or garments at home.

But the most important thing to know is that unlike commercial dyes the homemade ones will need a fixative so the color stays in the fabric after washing.

But don’t worry because to make that fixative we will be also using ingredients you already have at home.

In addition to using our creativity in the natural tie dye it’s entertaining.

I mean, to experiment which tones and colors our kitchen’s vegetables and fruits can provide us so we can give them a second life to our resources before tossing them into the compost or garbage. 

I love experimenting, I’m a very curious and creative person so it was very interesting for me to do my research and test which colors result from the fruits and vegetables I can find in my fridge.

Dying the garments with the natural tie dye technique called my attention since it’s a free technique, all dyes are unique and on top of that, it has become seen a lot on social media.

I just had to try it out.

The natural dyes are ideal for a fun adventure to do in summer with your kids or simply to renew a shirt or white stained towel.

This is the first time I try with natural dye.

So, I chose the easiest way to learn with materials we can find in any supermarket and our kitchen.

What can you use for natural tie dye?

Here are some materials that you can use to.

• Water
• Containers
• Latex gloves
• Measuring cups
• Strainer or kitchen spoon
•  Rubber bands or thread (For natural tie dye)
• Enameled or Stainless steel pot (Some dyes stain so make sure to use an exclusive pot for dye)
•  Blueberries
• Turmeric
•   For fixative use salt that’s used with berries/fruits dyes Cotton t-shirt

How do you dye fabric naturally?

To make natural dye for the fabric you can use several kinds of vegetables, fruits, coffee, and even flowers!

Along with that, you will need to prep your fixative to make the colors hold into your fabric with salt and vinegar.

Natural Tie Dye Video Tutorial

Step-by-step instructions:

TURMERIC DYE

To prepare this natural dye use 1 spoon of turmeric for every 4 cups of water.

You can add another spoon if you want a stronger color taking into account the size of your garment. 

Place the spices and water in a stainless steel pot, stir, boil them, let them boil under low heat for around 1 hour, let it cool down (It’s not necessary to strain spices).

This dye doesn’t require fixative so you can proceed straight to dye.

CRUMPLE TIE DYE

Wash the garment and when it’s moistened. (Not soaked)

We used the Crumple technique for this dyed garment.

Pinch parts of the t-shirt with your fingers until they look smaller and wrinkled in all areas.

Then, squash your t-shirt (Keeping the wrinkled shapes the best you can) into a cloth ball.

Now, wrap up your t-shirt with 3 or 4 rubber bands (Can be thread) to keep the shape in place.

The dye won’t penetrate in the place where the rubber bands are and that will make the shapes in the original pattern.

Put on your gloves and pour small amounts of dye color in random spots through all the t-shirt. Make sure to leave some blank spots to ensure the effect is more visible.

Let it rest on a surface that can let the garment strain and set it under the sun.

If you would like, you can press with your iron the t-shirt when it’s dry to fixate the color even better.

Rinse in hot water until there’s no dye excess on it.

Done! You got a turmeric dyed garment for you.

BLUEBERRIES DYE

NOTE: It’s all right to use damaged, deformed, or too mature berries as long as they aren’t rotten or blackened.

Or you can use frozen fruit, fruit juice, or concentrated juice.

Use a minimum of 1 cup of crushed berries for every 3 cups of water. (For a small adult shirt it would be a little more than 3 cups of fruit in 10 cups of water, use more or less fruit and water for bigger or smaller adult shirts).

Place the fruit and water in a stainless steel cook pot, stir, set to boil, let it boil on low heat for around 1 hour, turn off the heat.

Let the liquid rest until it’s cool enough to handle it then strain the fruit and deposit the dye into a recipient.

SUNBURST TIE DYE

Now that the shirt is washed we’ll proceed to use the fixative.

In this case, we use salt, dissolve ½ cup of salt in 8 cups of water, place the cloth and cook at low heat for around an hour or more.

Rinse the garment with cold water and then when it’s moist we proceed to use the natural dye.

Place the garment on a plain surface and extend well.

Then pinch the cloth in several spots, pull upwards around 3cm-4cm.

Tie every spot with rubber bands.

Apply the dye on the knots that were made in the previous step.

Repeat the same for the back part of the shirt.

Now, apply the dye (You can choose any color) to the rest of the fabric that’s left blank.

For a better effect, try leaving a little white especially around the knots.

Let it rest on a surface that allows the garment to strain and place it under the sun (8 hours).

As a tip, the blueberry dye came on a greyish blue on the first dye and since I wanted a more purple tone I dyed the garment twice (After letting the first dye dry and I proceeded to dye again).

If you would like, you can iron the shirt when it’s dry so you can fixate the color a lot better.

Rinse in hot water and it would be ready.

Use it to dye more than fabric!

These techniques can be adapted to any garment!

We can give our reusable DIY bags a great natural dye.

Or give them a fresh look to our Daisy camisole top sewing pattern and even the Peony dungaree dress sewing pattern with a very original and creative natural dye!

This process is so entertaining that you can even turn it into a hobby! I’m really fascinated with the natural dyes and I want to keep trying them!

Surfing online I found another use for the leftover dyes, can you believe it?!

I love art and I loved the idea of using the leftover dyes as watercolors, also you can dye homemade recycled paper obtaining beautiful paper pages of natural colors.