DYE JOURNAL - BEETS!
Beets!
I kid you not— 9 times out of 10 when someone finds out that I naturally dye, they ask me: “Do you dye with beets??!”
My answer is usually “nah, nah….” as I haven’t heard/read about super stellar results. From what I’ve gathered through secondhand knowledge, the color tends to fade pretty quickly. And who wants that? I want color that lasts, so I’ve always ignored beets. But then some beautiful beets came is our Lil’ Farm CSA box this past week and I thought I should give them a try. This way I’ll know firsthand what dyeing with this veggie is like.
I saved all of the discarded tops from my beets before roasting them, then added some of the liquid left over from roasting. I put all of this is a big jar with a spoonful of alum, topped it off with hot water, gave it a good stir and submerged a skein of my handspun hemp/cotton yarn into the jar. It’s been super sunny and hot here in NC, so I put the jar outside to bake in the sun for a few days.
Putting the beet discards, alum, hot water and yarn into my big jar.
Putting my beet jar in the summer sun to let it do its solar dyeing magic.
When I dumped the contents out of the jar, the yarn was the most delicious magenta color! I dunked the yarn into a bowl of fresh water and— not to my surprise, sadly— most of the color washed right out. Bummer!
Ugh, I wish it would have stayed this delicious, beet color!
Yarn post hand wash.
The hemp/cotton yarn (and a little bit of wool I popped into the dye last minute) after a hand wash and dried.
The yarn was stained, so I guess it’s not nothin’… But definitely a disappointment. I’m still a little skeptical of the staining, so I’m going to do a lightfastness test over the next month to see how the color holds up to sunlight. (I’ll basically put a sample of the yarn in the window and let the sun shine on it. I’ll let you know how it looks in a few weeks…)
Welp, now I have a better understanding of dyeing with beets I guess! Hopefully whatever experiment I do next week will have more fun results!
Until then,
— KB
