Did you know that you can use avocados to dye fabric pink???
Over the years, I’ve looked through several books on dyeing with natural materials, and I’ve never seen avocados mentioned. This Valentine’s Day, I got to searching the internet for natural red dye sources and found avocado pits and avocado skin all over the place. I’d never considered them for dyeing- and I certainly wouldn’t have guessed what color they produce!
According to the internet, avocado pits and skins contain tannin, which acts as a mordant, so you don’t need to add to add anything special to make the dye permanent. [In case you’ve never dyed fabric, a mordant is a substance that acts as a bridge, bonding the dye to the fabric. Common mordants are vinegar (think of dyeing Easter eggs), alum, cream of tartar, salt, and many metals. (Metals can be highly toxic. You can add rusty nails to a dyebath to act as an iron mordant. Metals can drastically change the colors of dyes.) Tannin is found in tea, so you can understand why tea stains.]
The next night, I opened an avocado in my motel room. It wasn’t until after dinner that I thought, Why not give it a try? I fished the remains out of the trash and washed them off.
First, I filled a small glass mixing bowl (the only dish I brought with me) with water and dropped the pit in. I didn’t peel the papery the skin off the pit, didn’t cut the pit into pieces- I didn’t do anything to it. In the microwave, I boiled the water for a while, maybe 15-25 minutes, where it turned a rose color.
I found a couple white flour sack towels in my car and soaked one of them in the dyebath for maybe 20-30 minutes. (I didn’t time it.) Afterward, I rinsed the towel and hung it to air dry.
Next, I boiled the avocado skin in the microwave and followed the same procedure.
At this point, the towel dipped in the pit bath ended up a clear pink tint, whereas the towel from the skin bath looked mauve.
A couple days later, I machine washed and dried the towels. They ended up virtually indistinguishable, the same pale pink color.
[Photos were taken in different motels with different lighting. But you get the general idea.]
I’m sure that soaking the fabric for a longer amount of time or using more than one avocado would yield a darker color.
Even if you have no reason to dye fabric pink, you can always use this method for Easter eggs.
