Dabbling with Natures Bounty – dyeing with avocado skins and stones

Oh welcome back, I have missed you and I do believe there may be a few new members to our all-inclusive club too and so to you I say a very warm welcome and hello from us all. I am so glad you are here and I hope you are ready to join in with wonderful creative makes, ideas and chat each week. If like me you have had glorious sunshine whilst I was away, weren’t we so lucky to have quite so much through these oddest of days? And of course, if you didn’t have warm sunshine, I imagine you created cosy and warm for yourselves and loved ones. Moreover, I truly hope you and yours have remained safe and healthy, for that is all any of us can ask for at the moment. Right, now this blog is designed to be a little escapism from all that day to day stuff; this spot in your day is about discovering your own creative spark, for I do believe we all have one.  Between now and Christmas I have a plethora of crafts, up-cycles and design tips to share with you both here and over on my Instagram account making use wherever we are able, with that which we already have around us. There’ll be my usual nod to recycling, reusing and reinventing where we can so, shall we begin with this week’s craft? Today we will be dyeing with avocado skins and stones for a great many crafts to come in the following weeks and I have a lovely quick win to set you on your way. First though a true story…

“What on earth is all the noise about?” asked Mr M as he rushed into the room and found me screeching and staring in horror at our smouldering iron. “I have absolutely no idea what happened, I simply unplugged it and it went bang and all this smoke came pouring out; I could have been killed!” I finished perhaps a little too dramatically. “I doubt that darling” he mocked “I imagine the iron itself is more shocked than you. I can’t recall the last time you got that thing out!” He finished his retort rather pleased with his little joke. Rude I thought, although he may have a point. I gathered together my newly pressed and folded avocado dyed linens and cottons for that is surely why the iron was invented and stomped off in the direction of The Craft Room to begin this week’s exciting new make.

Just a week before the iron staged a protest, it had been brought to my attention, my somewhat artistically crafted bowl full of avocado skins and stones, was indeed about to topple over. “Surely you have enough now for whatever it is you’re doing with them” he’d said. Please note, not all of these avocados were eaten by me…

I have dabbled in a little vegetable and flower dyeing in the past although I find none as immediate or satisfying as dyeing with avocado stones and skins. For a good read with beautiful photography on the subject, I cannot recommend this coffee table book enough. A gift from Mr M, it is thoughtfully written and covers so many ways in which to dye naturally and even has a few crafty projects to try yourselves. And if online is more your thing, you could disappear for a while in Pinterest pages with yet more ideas.

Let us talk results first, for as far as I can tell, your dye strength, your chosen fabrics and the length of time your fabric is in the dye, will all play a major role in your result. Every avocado type will yield a different hue and the fruits skin will afford a different shade to that of its stone. Sometimes you are rewarded with a deep pink, another time will be a pale peach. I have even had a rusty orange when once I changed the colour of a plain old dust sheet by dyeing with avocado. Half the fun is in the experimentation process and I have yet to repeat the same result twice. There really appear to be few rules although my top tip would be to always wash your fabric first, since any stains will be noticeable once dyed and dried.

To begin you will need several well washed skins and stones although maybe not quite as many as I used, which you add to a large pan of water. One tip I read is to remember you are not cooking the dye medium, so bring your pan to the boil and continue on with only a slow simmer. Once mine was as so, I checked it regularly until I had achieved something akin to a Chianti red and when I removed the skins and stones from the dye solution and turned off the heat, it had been around two hours.

I enjoyed raiding my stash of fabrics and added to my pot, strips of torn cotton, snippets of linen, a skein or two of embroidery thread and even remnants of a sheet left over from this project. I experimented with various papers too which didn’t need too long to take on a different colour entirely and so were removed long before the fabrics.

I checked the pot at half hourly intervals (remember the colour will always be stronger before rinsing) and marvelled at the changing shades of the fabrics. Deciding I was in no hurry, I left my stash in the dye solution overnight. The next day I rinsed each piece gently in cool water and allowed to air dry. Maintaining a fabrics colour permanently requires a mordant, a whole other new skill. So not for today, although both my recommended book and research on line offer lots of ideas for that process. Put simply, without a mordant your fabrics will fade over time yet since my fabrics will all be used in home crafts, I opted for no mordant.

These next two photos show my initial dyeing with avocado results and here the fabric is still wet…

Now the same fabric when dry…

Honestly? I was disappointed with the peachy look. I had high hopes for a deeper pink which I’d managed last year. So I took a selection of the dried peach coloured fabrics and added these to a fresh batch of avocado dye, made with far fewer skins and stones resulting in the pink tones I favoured. Maybe less really is more.

Two experiments with differing results…

For my next trick I stored the cooled dye solution in a Kilner jar to which I added several other snippets and scraps just to see if the cool dye held any merit. The very next day I was rewarded with another variation on the avocado dye theme although I decided against keeping the solution any longer. There can be no longevity with water and no preservative and although clearly labelled, I worried the graduate – yes he is no longer a student and yes he did very well thank you for asking – might mistake it for a new fandangle cocktail.

So far from this pile of fabric I have had enormous fun ripping endlessly at cotton and linen creating rustic ribbons which will dress presents and dried flower arrangements and I enjoyed crafting these gift tags to which I added a few oddments of lace and treasures.

I airily deduce from these experiments, fewer skins and stones get you more of a pink than a peach. Experts who may be reading might think this poppycock since there are a whole host of variables to potentially change the outcome: I wish I’d paid more attention in the chemistry lab. You’ll only know yourself, once you try. So, are you in? If you feel inspired to try dyeing with avocado and don’t yet have enough time or avocados, you can build up a supply by freezing the washed and dried skins and stones in a suitable bag or tub or by storing in a cardboard box, poked with a few air holes and kept in a cool dark place. The skins and stones, not the entire avocado. You knew that.

And next week I’ll show you one of several beautiful crafts I have begun and which anyone can enjoy making, expert or not, with or without a sewing machine. I warn you though, this dyeing with avocado craft is extremely addictive and utterly satisfying. Until next week…x