Unlock the Beauty of Natural Dyes
Creative & Sustainable Ways to Color Your Fabrics
Dive into the vibrant world of natural dyes, where plants, minerals, and even food waste transform into stunning, eco-friendly hues for fabrics.
Unlike synthetic dyes, natural dyes offer a sustainable, non-toxic alternative, rich in history and unique, earthy tones—from golden turmeric yellows to deep indigo blues.
Whether you’re a textile artist, DIY enthusiast, or eco-conscious crafter, exploring natural dyes opens up endless possibilities: botanical printing, bundle dyeing, shibori resist techniques, and even upcycling old fabrics with avocado pits or onion skins.
In this guide, we’ll cover how to extract color from nature, prep fabrics for dyeing, and experiment with creative techniques for one-of-a-kind, organic designs. Ready to embrace slow fashion and sustainable art? Let’s get dyeing!
1. Knit your natural dyes including hand-dyed luxurious silk shawls, scarves, and wraps as birthday gifts and holiday gifts! Include a recycled paper card letting your special someone know that their gift was hand-knit and hand-dyed using natural dyes made with love from your very own garden or local farmer’s market!
2. Revive your wardrobe. Everyone has something white or pastel that they cannot wear because of some annoying food or beverage stain. Instead of pitching it, bring it back to life! Revitalize it with some homemade natural dye (and have fun doing it!)
3. Knitting shawls, scarves or comfy-cosy wraps as gifts is a great way to show your loved ones how much you care. Use undyed silk, wool, cashmere, or silk/wool blend yarn and dye it in a natural dye of your choosing. Your loved ones will love it and the environment will thank you for it!
4. Add some passion to your bedroom curtains and dye them naturally with pomegranate, beet or mangosteen. You can even mix a little indigo in with any one of the above to create some purple passion!
5. Transform a stained white or pastel tablecloth into something beautiful again! Choose a dark-colored natural dye made from indigo, walnut hulls, pomegranate, beet, or mangosteen so your next stains won’t be as visible!
6. Gather your old shawls, scarves, sarongs, sheets, dresses, t-shirts, towels, and tablecloths and transform them into creative works of art! Using your handmade natural dyes, you can make prayer flags, holiday flags, wall hangings, tapestries, wall art, and more.
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7. Get creative in your art space at home and at work. Make natural dyes for use in fabric art, dyeing canvas, batik art and whatever else inspires you. The possibilities are endless!
8. Go Green in the classroom! Take your class on a field trip to the local botanical garden, farmer’s market, or nursery and select your plants for natural dyeing. Prepare natural dyes together as a class, bottle them up, and use them to make safe, environmentally friendly arts & crafts projects and holiday gifts.
9. Get creative with your kids over summer vacation! Make your own natural dyes as a family and use them to make cool, tie-dye t-shirts that are colorful, safe and environmentally friendly!
10. Design your eco-friendly clothes or accessories line! Buy undyed organic cotton, hemp, or bamboo fabric and dye them with your own natural dyes. You can even reuse patches of old fabric and dye it with a complementary color, creating a textured, patchwork look to your design.
Incredibly Handmade is a one-of-a-kind shopping site with gorgeous hand-woven shawls, scarves, handcrafted beaded and handcrafted sterling silver jewelry, handmade bags, unique embroidered fabric purses, and other handmade accessories and ethnic crafts from around the world. Many of these ethnic accessories are handmade by hill tribe people such as the Mien, Karen, and Hmong scattered throughout mountainous regions of Asia. Many hours go into the making of these unusual, one-of-a-kind pieces. In buying handmade accessories, our customers preserve the art of traditional, cultural handicrafts while supporting talented artisans all over the world.
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Love tie-dye but want to ditch the chemicals? Discover how natural dyes can create stunning, sustainable swirls—from vibrant turmeric yellows to deep avocado pinks and rich walnut browns. Unlike synthetic dyes, plant-based colors bond beautifully with cotton, silk, and hemp, offering softer, earthy hues and a planet-friendly twist on a psychedelic classic. Learn how to:
✔ Prep fabric for maximum color absorption (no harsh mordants needed!)
✔ Extract intense dyes from kitchen scraps (think onion skins, black beans, and hibiscus)
✔ Tie, fold, and resist-dye with natural pigments for organic, sun-bleached effects
✔ Set colors without toxic fixatives (hello, vinegar and salt baths!)
Perfect for hippies, zero-waste crafters, and slow-fashion lovers, this guide makes eco tie-dyeing simple, creative, and fun. Ready to give your swirls a nature-made upgrade? Let’s dip, twist, and dye the green way!
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Links on this natural dyes page are sponsored affiliate links and the owner makes a commission if you buy after clicking these links. The owner is not a bona-fide user of natural dyes. However, he thoroughly researched natural dyes and provided only a personal opinion. This disclosure is by the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”