Natural Silk & Egg Dyeing
With Madlyn Jane
March 9th, 2021
A RAINBOW OF color can be found in your kitchen thanks to the magic of natural dye! With spring upon us at Sarah’s Silks we got our eggs and silks out and ready for dyeing. This recipe will dye 12-24 eggs and 8 mini Playsilks (or 4 regular size Playsilks).

What You'll Need:
-
12-24 Brown and white eggs
-
Glass jars
-
Several pots for cooking the dyes
-
Half a head of purple cabbage
-
4 avocado pits (clean the brown skin off your pits before dyeing)
-
2 Large handfuls of yellow onion skins (collecting discard skins from the grocery store is helpful!)
-
3-4 Tablespoons of turmeric
-
3-4 Beets
-
Concord grape juice
-
Vinegar

For the silks:
Bring each dye pot to a simmer - simmer for 20 mins for all items. For the avocado, the longer it's cooked the better the color. For the color here we simmered our avocado pits for 2 hours.
Ring out your silk and hang to dry out of the sun (the turmeric silk may need a little rinse to clean off the spice). Leave your silks to “cure” as we start on the eggs.

For the eggs:
Chop the beets, cover with water, and simmer for 20 mins to extract the dye, strain and add the liquid back to the pot.
Put grape juice in a pot for dyeing.
Your silks and eggs will share the same dye bath.
Place eggs in dye pots making sure the dye covers the eggs (add a bit of water if needed). When the dye starts to simmer cook your eggs for 10 mins.
Prepare glass jars - ideally one jar for each egg to get the maximum dye coverage, but you may place 2-3 eggs in each jar.

Place eggs in jars with warm dye.
Using the dye for watercolors after you're done with silks and eggs is another fun way to continue the magic of natural color!
Silk and egg color guide