About natural dyes.

I thought it'd be wise to save this post of mine (from this thread at EMS BB) about my dye experiments, as you can never know when it'll be victim of pruning:

"Greetings from my kitchen.

You can have beautiful, natural colours with spices. I tried paprika (curry powder and turmeric would be great too, I think) last night and got beautiful results. (Pics in here.)

I had small piece of (soft, I don't know why it is that soft...) ecru aida and bigger piece of regular pure white aida.

Results were:

• Ecru = peach
• white = light latte.

How?

• some excess time
• kettle
• 1 litre of water
• ½ dl of salt
• 2 ts bicarbonate (that thing used in baking)
• 4 ts paprika.

Add salt, bicarbonate (It'll foam a bit. ) and paprika to boiling water. Add moist fabric pieces (I had about
10x 40 cms (~4/ ~16 inches) all together) and let it simmer about an hour. Remember to stir(?) them frequently.
After an hour put 1 part of vinegar and 2 parts of water to suitable container and move fabric piece(s) to it and let them be a while.
Rinse.

This colour stands washing. I tried it yesterday. Though I don't know
will it take machine washing, but I made instant washing machine from jam jar (jar, hot water and washing powder) and spent some time shaking it.

Fabrics lost some colour but at least they should be more or less colourfast now.

It was so fun, I want to do more of that.

Btw, some may ask why I used bicarbonate? I'm used to as when I studied we used professional dyes and used bicarbonate (or some it's derivative) among salt. I don't remember how it should affect to colours. - - -"