4. Biochromes: Color to Dye for!¶

Ideas and Inspiration¶

'Twas an interesting week. This week we are exploring natural dying, ink making and bacterial dying. So excited and nervous. The thought of separating my pots and pans and keeping a separate set for dying is a bit overwhelming. It made me think about dyes and fabrics and how many beautiful things that have been ruined by pesky food stains. I have had many dinner parties where guests have spilled red wine and ruined my pretty french linen tablecloths. I wanted to to try dying with black beans so I went to the grocery in search of ingredients for dying and dinner! The store discontinued black beans so I gathered the ingredients for dinner, a red wine pot roast, and decided to use some of the leftover ingredients for dying. I picked up a cheap ($3.00) bottle of red wine for the roast. The red wine pot roast only calls for a small amount of wine and because I don't drink I decided to use the rest to dye fabric and make ink! My oldest son fell at school and broke his arm so I was busy taking him to doctor's visits this week and missed the in person dying demos. Can't wait to catch up and watch these soon.

Noah the rhino

Was quite the wino

Hues of wooded

Or berry or footed

Would sate his palate

He'd cast his ballot

For Pinot or Merlot

He'd take a furlough

To decant all his reds

Then fall into bed

Experiment 1: Dying a Cotton T-Shirt with red wine¶

Step 1¶

For most natural dyes you're supposed to mordant, scour and weigh your fabrics first. I skipped these steps because I wasn't sure if the red wine dye would work and just gathered what I had. I wanted to be able to reuse my pots and utensils for cooking that day so I used only food safe ingredients for this first experiment.

Assemble your ingredients
Leftover Red Wine
A freshly washed shirt- the one I used was 95% cotton 5% spandex
Large stockpot
Rubber Bands

Step 2¶

Measure your ingredients. I used 1/2 cup for the recipie so the rest went into my stockpot for dying

Step 3¶

Prepare your fabrics. I folded my shirt and wrapped it in rubber bands to get interesting dye patterns. This is optional of course. If you want a more uniform dye throughout do not do this.

Step 4¶

Bring the red wine to a boil.

Step 5¶

Place your item in the pot and let it sit for 24 hours. Be sure the fabric is covered by the red wine. I transferred both to a smaller pan for overnight sitting.

Cover if you'd like because you may attract unwanted fruit flies.

Step 6¶

Remove your garment

Step 7¶

Place in a pan and bake your garment at 170 degrees F. For an hour or until dry. The recipe called for 10 minutes but it took over 1.5 hours for my shirt to dry.

Step 8¶

Rinse all excess wine to remove wine smell.

Step 9¶

Lay flat to air dry and then machine wash and dry your piece

Step 10¶

Enjoy! Dip again for a deeper shade.

Experiment 2: Making Ink with red wine¶

Coming Soon!

Video¶