Red and Yellow Onion skin dye

This is the yellow onion skin dye. In this one we were dyeing two dish towels. One was white and the other was off white.

I have a bad habit of forgetting to take before and after pictures. Usually I end up doing one or the other but rarely both. However, on this project I forgot both and only ended up with the in the middle pictures.

This is the red onion dye.

On their own these dyes faded quite a bit after just a few washes. That wasn't a problem for us since it was just an attempt to cover the stained look of the towels, and we weren't particularly fond of the results of the yellow dye. The fading of the towels actually made the color not as bad as it was at first. It is just a personal preference.

For us once dried the towels dyed in the yellow dye turned out as an intense mustardy sort of color. Less orange and more yellowish than the picture. The napkin in the red onion dye ended up looking like a brownish tan with a slight reddish hue. Although the water in your area might affect the color, don't know for sure but it is something to consider.

This is another picture of the yellow dye.

How we created dye from onion skins:

• Rub off the dry outer skins of as many onions off that color as you want to or as you have. The more skins the stronger the color.
• Place the skins in a saucepan and just barely cover with water.
• Cook on low heat stirring every once in awhile for a few hours. The cooking time just depends on what you want the color to be. We just cooked it until the color looked like we wanted it too. If you wanted an exact time you could probably Google it in to see. Make sure your water doesn't cook away too much.
• Once done cooking allow to cool slightly and then strain out skins. Discard skins in compost.
• Place items to be dyed in the dye making sure they are covered with dye. If they stick out a little just make sure you stir and turn the item every so often to ensure that it is dyed evenly.
• Let items soak in the dye until desired color is reached.
• Once desired color has been reached rinse items under cold water and dry. If you don't line dry them you will not want to add anything else to the dryer with them, just for the first drying. They can be washed and dried just like anything else after that.

Have fun experimenting!

Even though we ended up not liking the colors all that much, it was really fun to have created our own dyes from natural things we grew ourselves and I definitely want to try making dyes from other natural items such as walnuts and berries. After doing project like these it just show that the simple things are the most fun.