Walnut Dyeing of Fabric

                     This afternoon I took a bike ride around the lakes in our town and afterwards stopped to sit and enjoy the view when I noticed a bunch of walnuts lying on the ground.  I don't know what possessed me, but I decided to take them home and see how they would dye white fabric. The first photo is of the walnuts in a plastic bucket.  I boiled water and poured it over the walnuts, and inserted two pieces of white fabric.  After about a half hour there was not noticeable difference in the color of the fabric, so I left it in for three hours.  The picture above shows the color change between the original white fabric and the walnut dyed fabric.  More walnuts and darkers hulls probably would have made the color change more intense.  Just my Thursday afternoon experiment! 

Comments

[Kimberly Baxter Packwood]

Scour your fabric first with soda ash, even if it's PFD fabrics.

You do this by putting the fabric into boiling water that contains one ounce of soda ash, you then boil it for approximately two hours.

Then take your walnut hull liquor, you only need the hulls not the nuts, and dye your fabrics in the liquor.

I soak my hulls for long periods of time, longest vat going is ten years old now. Oldest vat I worked with was Judy Dominic's and it was 15 years old, stored in old glass pop bottles.

You don't need to boil your dye baths, in fact for most dye colors boiling destroys the color.

[Karen Stiehl Osborn]

The secret to dyeing with walnut hulls is to let them soak in the water for weeks, months, or even years. I have a bucket that is 2 years old, and it dyes a beautiful dark brown now.