Dyeing For Color: Blueberry Edition

This is the first edition of a series called Dyeing for Color. In this series of blog posts I’ll dive into more traditional dyes as we hop through the rainbow to appreciate a world of color that came before chemicals. 

My first experiment with traditional dyes was very spontaneous and was inspired by my periodic refrigerator overhaul. While checking expiration dates and tossing items that had been forgotten in the back of my freezer, I came across some blueberries that had succumbed to frostbite. Instead of tossing them into my compost pile, I decided to cook them on the stovetop and use the juice to dye a small batch of reed.

It took much longer than I anticipated, I let the reed soak in the dye bath for about three hours!

When dyeing reed, it is always a good idea to test the dye on a small piece of material. It is also important to remember that the color of your dye when it is wet will often be different than when it is dry.

This is my small batch of blueberry dyed reed when it was mostly dry. The finished color was much different than my test strip, which most likely had something to do with water dilution. Next time I use blueberries, I’ll have to make sure I use more of them!

As a general rule, I always soak my dyed reeds separate from reeds I’ve left in their natural state. Occasionally, the dye will run in the water bathe and I don’t want to risk staining reeds I’ve intended to leave natural. The blueberry dye didn’t run in the water bathe, which meant the colors were absorbed well and it was rinsed thoroughly after the initial dye bathe.