Onion skins are simple to collect and make beautiful colors if you create a dye with them. I show you how I did it here! You can use all colors of onions.
I have been wanting to try this for quite a while. I will probably give it another shot soon because I don’t feel like I had enough onion skins to get a rich color. The more the better. Onion skins are SO light and you need the weight to be at least 1/8th of the weight of your fabric for it to get color and more if you’d like a darker color. That means for one towel at 70 grams, you need at least 10 grams of onion skins. This was 20 grams here and I had two towels!
See all my must haves to dye in your home here.
I forgot to grab a picture of the onion skins before I boiled them because I got too excited. Sorry about that.
Start boiling your water. Once the water is brought to a boil put in your onion skins. Either cover it and turn it off overnight or keep it simmering for an hour.
Put in your cloth and let it sit overnight.
This is what the pot looked like after it sat overnight.
Rinse your cloth and either put it in an iron bath or wash and be done with it! I did one of each so you could see the difference.
This is what it looked like when the regular onion skin towel was rinsed.
I also did one in an iron bath (this is a method I use ALL THE TIME and you can see how here.) This is the color I got after that.
Onion skins were pretty simple to use to dye but I’m not sure I’ll make it part of my regular routine. You need a LOT and we don’t eat enough onions to really make it worth it. I’ve heard that you can ask the grocery store to save them for you and if that’s the case, I’ll try it again!
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