Farm & Folk Limited Edition 6-Pack Dye Flower Sampler
Introducing the Farm & Folk Limited Edition 6-pack of Dye Flowers. Drink up! This edition is for all you flower connoisseurs and contains some of my favorite dye flower varieties. The 6-pack can be purchased either with tannin and mordant or without. Keep in mind that this is a sample pack and not a kit that comes with specific instructions and materials to dye. You get to choose what to do with the dyes and that’s the fun part! You may want to use it to refresh some garments that could use a little spruce up, or you may want to dye some brand new items. In this post I’ll share some ideas regarding new items to dye that I think would be a great fit for the flower samples, but first let me introduce the 6-pack flowers.
THE 6-PACK FLOWERS
left to right top & bottom: black scabiosa, dyer’s chamomile, dyer’s coreopsis, marigold, sulfur cosmos, black hollyhock
WHAT TO DYE?
Gosh I can think of a lot of things I want to dye with flowers but here are a few off the top of my head:
Harvest & Mill grown & sewn in the USA organic cotton socks. I love that the cotton is 2-tone because they will dye that way and gosh these socks would look amazing dyed in each flower color.
This 10 pack of organic cotton onesies. You could dye one of each color and have four left over to dye lighter shades from the exhaust dye baths.
Botanical Colors pre-mordanted 6 pack of cotton bandanas. These are great for those who don’t want to deal with mordanting. They’re ready to pop into the dye pot and go!
Maiwa blanks! Maiwa has tons of fantastic dyeables and most of them are organic cotton. From sets of hankies, and bandanas, to sets of napkins and tea towels, all the way to luxurious shawls if you want something special to dye. I love their organic cotton mull shawls.
Shop ARQ un-dyed high-rise cotton undies. They offer several other styles as well and you can purchase coordinating bras and tanks to go with them.
Dharma Trading offers a nice selection of organic fair-trade dyeable shirts. They have all kinds of dyeables and I’m just noticing this dyeable dog bed duvet that you can stuff with fabric scraps and old clothing which is kind of really cool! If you need a good laugh go check out their dyeable doggie baby rib tank! Yes, you’re gonna find something to dye over at Dharma.
Fat Quarters of fabric for quilting or other textile and mending projects: You could buy a couple yards of organic cotton or hemp muslin fabric and cut it into fat quarters and dye each fat quarter a different dye flower color. Then save the exhaust baths to dye lighter shades of fat quarters as well to create a gradation of colors to work with.
PFD sashiko thread for mending or hand quilting. How fun it would be to dye a skein of each flower color!
Wool yarn for colorwork knitting projects. One dye flower sample box should be enough to dye one skein of yarn.
HOW TO DYE THE THINGS?
These instructions are for cellulose fibers. If you will be dyeing protein fibers such as wool or silk you will need to reference tutorials elsewhere as the processes are slightly different.
Scour: If you will be dyeing used or repurposed items you can likely skip this step, but if in doubt scour because it never hurts. If you’re dyeing new fibers you will definitely need to scour. You can refer to this blog post I wrote which explains in detail the scouring process.
Mordant: Mordant is necessary because it facilitates a permanent bond between fiber and dye. If you skip this step the dye will fade or wash away. You can refer to this blog post I wrote which explains in detail the two step mordanting process.
Dye: Once scouring and mordanting are out of the way you can make the visible magic happen by transferring the dye color to your fiber. It never gets old! You can refer to this blog post I wrote which explains in detail the natural dye process. This post also explains how you can save your dye baths (dyers refer to these as exhaust baths) to dye other items lighter shades.
That should get you off to a great start! Please leave a comment if you have any questions or if you would like to share what you will be dyeing with our dye flower sample pack. Please tag me on Instagram when you’re working with the pack so I can see what you’re doing with it. I’m always so happy to see what you guys do with this magic that I grew from tiny little seeds that became……flowers! As always thank you for supporting our small family farm. Each purchase helps us continue our mission in being the humble stewards of miraculous living soil and biodiversity.
