Onion Skin Dye Bath

 I have been saving all my onion skins for about a month now. I tucked away both purple and yellow skins. I finally have enough to make a dye bath. 

Collecting Onion Skins

Seeping the skins in 3 gallons of water

I let the skins simmer and then let them sit for 48 hours to really release the color. Natural dyeing is a process and usually takes a few days. You need some time and patience. I usually plan out about four days for all the steps and I leave time for extra seeping for the dye stuff. 

The onion bath is nice and dark. I simmered the skins 

for 70 minutes and then let them seep for 48 hours. I strained 

the dye bath and placed my mordant merino wool socks in.

First dip into the dye bath. Lovely color. I am really excited to see how the socks turn out. 

Simmering for 35 minutes and waiting for the them to finish. 

This is the dye bath after the socks are done. It is much lighter. I placed 4 skeins of yarn.

Simmering the yarn for 35 minutes. I expect the yarn to be much lighter in color as I am using the exhaust dye bath. I may want to re-dye these skeins with fresh onion skins. I really love the color of the socks. They are a lovely, yellow.  

The re-dyed skeins are darker yellow and very pretty. I also dyed cotton napkins and I love how orange they turned out.