Grapevine Stem Dye

Dyeing with natural dyes are very easy. In my last post I showed you how you can use onion skins to dye fabric. Today I am going to show you the color dye you can get from using grapevine stems. Grapevine grows wild here where I live and I know it grows in a lot of places in the US. If you don't have any wild grapevine handy I am sure you could cut apart one of those grapevine wreaths everyone had hanging in their house years ago. They are still very popular and can be found in most craft stores.

Below is a picture of two pieces of fabric. The white fabric is what I used in the dye bath. I am using the solar dyeing method which means I place my dye material in a glass jar and place it out into the sun. I happen to live in Florida and the sun is still very strong. If it is cold where you live you can try boiling the stems to release the dye.

It will depend on the natural dye material used when you will start to see the water turn color. It took about three days for me to see a good bit of color in the water. I then placed a piece of material in the jar with the stems and colored water. Today I took the material out and ironed it dry. This is the color I got.

Isn't this so cool. As you can see I am enjoying this experiment. Now this piece of material isn't big enough for me to do much with but for the sake of experimentation it was good enough and I am sure I will find something to use it on. I'llprobably use it for a transfer.

Thanks for stopping by!

Arlene