Easy Natural Dyeing Techniques for Fabric

A Quick guide on how to Safely and Easily dye fabric using a few kitchen staples

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with using some natural ingredients around my kitchen to dye fabric.

It has been SO much fun.

Here’s my experience and what I’ve learned so far, using rosemary, hibiscus tea, coffee, and turmeric.

(for reference, I dyed cotton fabric)

Key Takeaways:

Don’t have time to read the whole post? I get it.

Here are the key takeaways:

Soaking your fabric in alum acts as a “glue” for getting the dye to better stick to your fabric.
Rinse out the alum before soaking in the dye bath.
The longer you soak your fabric in the dye bath, the deeper the colors will be.
Rosemary makes green. Fresh or dried will work.
You can leave fabric in a jar of turmeric and hot water in the sun for several days to get a nice yellow!
Hibiscus tea ranges from grey to red, depending on how you rinse out your fabric after dyeing.
Coffee makes brown. (are you surprised?)
Wash separately until you are certain that the colors will not bleed into your everyday laundry!

Where I got my ingredients:

Here’s where I got everything that I mentioned in this blog post!

Alum
Bulk Hibiscus Tea
Bulk Rosemary
Bulk Turmeric
Coffee that still will be nice to drink after you’ve used it for dyeing

Before you Begin

Before you begin, you’ll want to start with clean fabric.

Then, you’ll want to soak your fabric in alum and hot water for about an hour.

I boiled water in my tea kettle, then poured it into a bowl off the stove to let soak.

You’ll want about 2 tbsp for every gallon of water, or 1 1/2 tsp for every quart of water.

Truthfully, I just eyeballed it all. Dyeing isn’t an exact science, and it’s fun to play around with!

Soaking your fabric in alum acts as a “glue” for getting the dye to better stick to your fabric.

After your fabric gets a good soak in alum, rinse it out of your fabric.

I just gave my fabric a quick rinse in the sink with cold water, nothing too through.

Wondering why alum is found in the seasoning aisle at the grocery store? It’s used for pickling (keeps the veggies crisp), and in baking (helps baked goods rise).

Dyeing with Rosemary

Dyeing with rosemary makes green a variety of greens.

The more rosemary you use, the deeper the green will be.

You can use fresh or dried, but unless you’re growing it in the garden, it would be very expensive to use it fresh.

My rosemary plants in the garden are still just babies, so I just dumped dried rosemary into a pot and let it boil.

Let your rosemary boil for about an hour before straining it and adding your fabric to it.

If you don’t strain your dye bath first, you’ll get lots of bits of rosemary to wash out of your fabric, and it’s really irritating.

The longer you soak your fabric, the deeper the colors will be.

I soaked my fabric in rosemary overnight, then rinsed it out in the morning.

Sun Dyeing with Turmeric

Turmeric makes a lovely yellow color — I use it to make yellow icing for birthday cakes (you only need a teeny tiny bit in the icing, and you don’t taste a thing!).

Now I can say that I use it to dye fabric, too!

I decided to “sun dye” with turmeric.

Sun dyeing might be my favorite way to obtain fun colors yet!

Just throw some turmeric in a jar with hot water, throw your fabric in, put a lid on it, and leave it in the sun for at least several hours, up to a couple of days.

Rinse completely.

Apparently, turmeric dye will fade over time, but I have not personally run into that yet.