Adventures in Natural Tie-dye - with Children!

I love the idea of creating something new using what we already have at home. It's the ultimate in creating because you have to be resourceful and smart. Today I'm sharing a semi-successful dying project using materials we already have and that is safe to do with children.

Have you tried tie-dying with your children? We've tie-dyed before using a kit but the children needed to be extra careful with the dye and wear gloves. Recently at our Bush School class, the children tie-dyed using found items (leaves, wild berries) and mud. The mud is said to be high in iron and produced a wonderful result. Even after many washes, the dye remains on Otto's shirt.

So I've felt super inspired to try tie-dying again at home using other natural colours. Here we are using beetroot juice, turmeric, matcha and coffee. I help both Otis (9yrs) and Otto (3yrs) to tie their garments with rubber bands. Otis tied a lot of his and maybe they weren't tight enough to make a difference.

Once the rubber bands are on the children use the squirt bottles to apply the natural dye. All the squeezing is fantastic for their developing hand muscles. I love to use these bottles with paint and coloured water for colour mixing too.

The colours here are beautiful.

The boys coloured socks, singlets and tshirts.

The turmeric is causing the gorgeous deep orangey gold colouring.

Pictured above are the garments once they were unrolled (rubber bands removed) and dried. Now most people recommend heating the garments with a mordant or fixative. However as I wanted the children to do this, heating it was not an option. I know turmeric doesn't need a mordant and our mud dye had worked at Bush School, I was hoping a cold wash in vinegar might work, however it washed out all the other colours (surprisingly including the beetroot juice which always stains for me) and we were left with this amazing golden turmeric colour.