Natural Dye Kit Fun for Homeschool • Homestead Lady

I’m reading Chris McLaughlin’s book A Garden to Dye For and I’m on this natural, plant based dye kick! For our homeschool science fair this year we did a project that explored natural dye – dyes made from plants. I’m learning there are a lot of plant dyes I can make from things growing in my yard but we needed a high volume of dyes all at once for this and since I didn’t know what I was doing, I needed some mentoring. Enter – Natural Dye Kit Fun For Homeschool!

[sc:”media net 600 120 horizontal” ]

Is there a Natural Dye Kit?

So, I was on Amazon trying to find a kit of plant based dyes that were ready to use and came with instructions – I found one!! Blue Castle Natural Dyes sells several kits as well as individual colors and other products. Here’s a link to their direct site and to the Amazon link for the kit I bought and they also sell on Etsy. They’re not an affiliate, I just liked their product and we parents/teachers have to look out for each other. I wanted a kit that could walk me through the process of using not just natural dyes but dyes in general since I’d never done this before. I originally balked at the $5o price tag but I started looking at all the projects we wanted to try and realized that I was going to need a wide range of colors and enough dye to do homeschool projects for the whole school year. So, I bit the bullet and made the purchase. I actually contacted the owner last year about doing a giveaway for one or two of these kits because I loved mine so much and then we started preparing our house to sell it and I had a surprise baby and I put it on the back burner. I need to email her again and see if she’s still up for it…

[sc:”468 60 media net” ]

Natural Dye Kit Contents

The contents of the kit were all nicely labeled and in easy to use and reuse, Ziploc type baggies. The instructions were clear and easy to follow.

How to Use the Natural Dye Kit

Just follow the instructions. Amen. You won’t go wrong and you’ll learn the basic ins and outs of dyeing with natural colors. Even if you want to make your own dyes eventually, this will give you some experience with proven natural dyes and will, therefore, take out a lot of the guesswork on results. Plus, you’ll learn the process, which is half the battle.

[sc:”Adsense horizontal” ]

The kids can totally help with this in a hands on way, FYI. With commercial, chemical dyes I would not be comfortable letting my kiddos get elbow deep in the process but these natural dyes are a different story. Don’t let your kids inhale them on purpose or paint each other with them, of course, but neither do you need to freak out that they’re going to die young if they interact with these dyes. The children will learn so much more if they can get involved in the process in a meaningful way. And we did learn a ton! We learned about the importance of preparing your fiber before you try to dye it by presoaking and mordanting it. We learned what materials work best for natural dye and little tricks for getting the fibers to stay put and to take the dye. We learned the procedure for dyeing with natural dye. The ultimate result was that we appreciate the plants around us so much more than we did before as we come up with cool, crafty ways to use our dyed fibers. The science fair was a success and we can definitely declare – Natural Dye Kit Fun For Homeschool!