Avocado Fabric Dye

Making avocado dye is one of my Make Nine projects for the year. Avocado dye has been on my want-to-do list for so so long, and I thought adding it to my make nine list would help me actually get around to it. I've been intimidated by the thought of it, but it was so so easy to do! I shouldn't have waited so long!

I started collecting avocado pits over a year ago, and then of course life got in the way. During that time I stashed away several avocado pieces. First a few pits in a plastic bag in my desk, then a few skins and a few more pits in the freezer, after I read about someone else storing them there.

I also stole an old pot from my mom for the dyeing, and dug through my stash to find some white remnant pieces to experiment with. As with most of the fabric in my stash, I have no idea what the fabric content is for these pieces, so I had no idea if they would take the dye well or not.

After slowly collecting everything for about a year, I ended up just throwing everything on the stove out of the blue one day! I had about 4 avocado skins and 7 pits, and I boiled these in a full pot of water and then let it simmer for a few hours, and then let it sit overnight. Meanwhile, I let the fabric pieces I was going to use soak in a bucket of water overnight as well. I've read that this helps give a more even dye.

The next day I strained the avocado pieces out of the dye, wrung the excess water out of the fabric, and put it in the dye pot. I lightly boiled the fabric in the dye, and then let it sit for another day, occasionally stirring and checking the fabric.

I was so incredibly happy with the results! I thought I would get maybe a light pink, maybe a nude color from the dye, but it turned out to be a darker dusty pink that I love! The dye still looked pretty dark, so I decided to do a second round of dyeing with my other two pieces of fabric just to see what would happen. The second round was significantly lighter. I also think I overfilled the pot on the second round, leading to some uneven dyeing of the fabric. But honestly, even this second batch of fabric is still such a beautiful color! 

I finished up by wringing out the excess dye, letting them air dry, and then putting them through the washer and dryer on a gentle cold wash and tumble dry low. It doesn't even look like they lost any of their color in the wash.

This process was so easy, and the results so much better than I expected! And I love avocados.... so...expect more dyeing in the future!