Use Your Mulberry Bush to Dye Fabric

If your mulberry bush is producing more berries than you can eat why not try dyeing with them? This gorgeous purple color will look great on natural fabric.

While you’re dyeing, don’t worry about making a mess because I teach you how to clean a stainless steel sink here.

I am always so excited when people hand me buckets of fully pigmented things and say “do you think you could use this?” UH YA I COULD USE THAT. So here is me trying my hand at using mulberries. It was SO fun and gave me incredible results.

Want to watch the process? Well that’s good here’s the video. Written instructions are below.

How to Dye with Mulberries

1. I tried mordanting my fabric and not mordanting my fabric. I HIGHLY suggest you mordant your fabric if you want it to be color fast and have a rich color. If you’re dyeing something like dyed easter eggs, obviously you don’t need to do this. Here is how you make an alum bath.
2. Put some water in a pot so that the fabric you are going to dye will cover your cloth.
3. Bring the water to a boil.
4. Place mulberries in the water. I just added what I thought would get me a lot of color. For approximately 1/2 a gallon of water, I put about 1 cup of berries in. The more berries you put in, the richer the color.
5. Turn off the heat.
6. Allow the berries to stay in the pot for an hour. I like to do this overnight for maximum color extraction!
7. Now you will get your berries out. You can use a strainer or use a slotted spoon. I… didn’t do this step because I’m lazy so I had a few splotches on my cloth but I was just experimenting. In the future I will do this.
8. Get your fabric wet and wring it out so it’s damp. If you want to tie your fabric do that at this point. Here is a video to give you some ideas of how to do that. 
9. Place the cloth in the water for at least 4 hours. The longer, the darker.
10. Remove the cloth and rinse it until the water runs clear.
11. Wash it on cold with gentle detergent and you are done! From this point you can wash it with other clothes and towels and it should not run or bleed.

Should I Mordant My Fabric for Mulberry Bush Dye

Short answer, yes do it. Long answer, if you’re using bamboo fabric you don’t totally have to but the color won’t be as dark. Below is the cotton result. The white fabric is the non mordanted fabric.

Here is the bamboo result. The left is the fabric that was mordanted.