Second Thursday Tutorial: Dyeing Fabric Using Orange Peels

 

As you can tell from the title, today I will be dyeing fabric using orange peels.

  Some of you have seen this bowl of mandarin oranges before.

  You may also recall I purchased the oranges for the peels because their outer skins are much thinner than regular oranges.

I added water to the peels and cooked them in the microwave oven for 30 minutes on 30% power.  I know ALL reputable web sites will tell you to cook them on the stove in a steel pot for an hour, but those sites also have a bigger budget than I have.  I am trying to conserve electricity, the cost of which is through the roof right now.  By using the microwave, I am hoping to 1) save on electricity and 2) achieve basically the same results.

  As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't sure I had the right color, but I decided it was probably not going to get much darker.  Using a strainer dedicated to crafts, I removed the peels.  I wondered if I should have cut or torn them a bit more before I cooked them. 

  At least they were easy to remove from the bath.

 

  I had to wait overnight until the liquid cooled sufficiently before I continued.  BTW, the spent peels went in my compost pile.

 

I took my orange peel juice to the basement and tore several pieces of old white bed sheet.  I left the fabric in my dye bath overnight.

I then microwaved the fabric and dye bath for two minutes at 100% power.

 I had to clean my lens so you could see the fabric.

Two more minutes at 100% power.

Then I flipped the fabric over in the dye bath

and cooked it in the microwave for another two minutes.

Then it was time to remove the fabric from the dye bath and allow it to dry.  The color is MUCH brighter in the photo than it really is.

After two days in my cold kitchen, the fabric was still quite wet.  I knew I had to iron it anyway, so I decided to kill two birds at once.

Fabric 1 is ready to iron.  The color isn't as vibrant as the photo suggests, but I love the mottled look I was going for.

Fabric 1 ironed.

Fabric 2 wet.

Fabric 2 ironed.

Sometimes the back side is even better looking than the front (of course, there is no real front or back, just one side or the other).

Fabric 3 wet.

Fabric 3 ironed.

Ruminations:

1. Orange peels should have been cut or torn into smaller sizes, which would have given a darker dye bath.

2. I wish I'd had more time before I had to publish.  I would have scanned a couple of the fabrics so you could see the true colors I got.  They are not as bright as my photos show.  However, they are mottled, which I love.

Thanks ever so much for joining me today.  As soon as this tutorial goes live, I will share it on my tutorials page.