As there isn't a large choice of seasonal plants or berries to dye with that create a good range of different colours during winter, I turn to using food waste to create some alternative colours that are hard to find.
I haven't tried using avocado stones to create a dye before as I don't like avocados to eat, so I asked a few family members and friends to save their stones for me. I asked everyone saving stones for me to wash the stones and leave out to dry. (I now think that freezing the stones would would preserve the colour in the stones better than drying them, however using the dried stones still worked well!)
AVOCADO STONE DYE #1
To create this dye with avocado stones, I had to slowly coax the colour out on a low heat setting in an aluminium pan. (I use aluminium pans for all of my dyes as I find that this brings the brightest colours out.) I turned the heat on and off a few times for a couple of hours at a time over the space of two days to allow the stones the split in half and release all of their colour.
When I had strained the dye with a muslin cloth, I then placed some wool, 2 ply wool yarn, and cotton that had been already treated with a soya milk mordant into the pan with the dye. I left this in the pan for another two days, turning it onto a low heat a few times to allow the wool and fabric to soak up the dye.
After the second day of dyeing the fabric, when I came to take the fabric out of the dye, I noticed it had a very strange texture in the pan. Somehow, the dye had gone gloopy! I'm not sure what caused this, it may have been the dye was constantly kept at a warm temperature in a utility room and this could have made it ferment maybe.
Luckily, I was able to remove the slimy texture when I rinsed out the fabric and wool with water. I am quite happy with the colour of the cotton, however the wool didn't seem to take much colour unfortunately. The spun wool took the colour better, but this could be because it is more dense than the raw wool.
After creating this dye, I decided that I would like to recreate it again but make it darker to see if the wool would take the dye a bit more.
AVOCADO STONE DYE #2
For the second dye, I used a higher number of avocado stones to create a darker pink.
I followed the same fabric, mordanting technique, and dye process as the first dye. Again, it took quite a long time to extract the colour. I think this is because some of the stones had dried up quite a lot. Freezing stones could possibly work better.
I didn't have any trouble with the texture of the dye changing with this dye. However, just as a precaution, each night I put the dye pot outside with the lid on as it would keep dye dye from fermenting or going mouldy.
The colour of the cotton came out slightly darker than the first dye but not quite as dark as I thought it might be. It could possibly come out darker if using fresh or frozen stones rather than dried or even avocado skin. The wool on the other hand, turned out darker than my first attempt. Still fairly pale, but definitely pink. After attempting dyeing with avocado stones twice, I feel confident that I could recreate this colour and would know what to do to maybe create an even darker colour.
🌱Kat Webb🌱
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