Fun with Flowers A.K.A. Flowers to Dye For

A few weeks back I mentioned that the process of coming up with art projects and following them through is how I study and learn about new things. One of the projects I am working on has to do with the chemistry of flowers and other organic material. While I was researching that project I got sidetracked and wandered off on a path with one of my all time favorite flowers the Black Eyed Susan.

And I learned something cool you can do with this flowering plant that I never knew about!

The Black Eyed Susan or Rudbeckia Hirta can be used as a fabric dye!

I thought I would give the dying hypothesis a try myself at home and then incorporate my results into an art project. Here is how it went:

1st step was to find some of the flowers. Lucky for me, every year my mother and I grow these flowers in our garden. Not only were there a few still blooming but I had saved a big bag of dried blooms so I could use the seeds to regrow flowers for next year.

Since I had a lot more of the dried petals than I had fresh, I decided to go with the died. I plucked off a bunch of the dried petals and added (approximately) equal parts water together in a pan on the stove.

I brought the water to a boil and boiled it until the water turned a deep reddish, orange.

Then I added some piece of white fabric to the water-flower mixture. If you try this at home you will want to use cotton or wool fabric. Synthetic fabrics probably will not pick up the color. I also read that you can “prime” your fabric by first soaking it in a bath of half water/ half white vinegar first. I just used an old white cotton T-shirt cut into squares for my experiment.

At this point I turned off the heat under the water and let the fabric soak in the mixture over night. If you intend to get an even dye color you would want to strain out the petals prior to adding the fabric. I did not mind if I got a mottled look so I just left the petals in the water mixture with the the fabric.

Another note is that the water/dye bath will look much darker than your final results will be.

After soaking the fabric squares I rinsed and hung the pieces out to dry.

The color came out a pretty pale yellow. Not as bright as the original flowers but yeah, it totally worked!

I tried a few variations of fresh petals to dry and found that the dried petals worked best, Probably because I had a higher ratio of petals to water when I used the dried petals. I also read that you can use the dark centers of the Black Eyed Susan to get a lovely lavender or brown dye as well. I haven’t tried this yet but plan to when I have more blooms this summer.

OH and after I tried this experiment a few times I took the dyed squares of fabric and added them to a painting I did of the flowers to document the activity!

Hope you enjoyed this fun little project! I love that I found another way to appreciate and utilize a plant that had already won my heart. Hooray for the Black Eyed Susan!

*All photos by me.

If you try this project at home and happen to be young, please have a parent help you with the stove steps!