Continuing with our theme of dyeing with plants we can find nearby, or waste from the kitchen, we had a go at dyeing with coffee. That is dyeing with the spent coffee grounds scraped out of the cafetiere. We saved them up in the freezer, and once freezer crisis was upon us, used them up.
The process is simply a matter of boiling up the used grounds (making the house smell very strongly of coffee) leaving it over-night, straining it through a fine strain (I guess coffee filter paper would be the thing, we used kitchen towel), then the wool went in the dye bath and heated for an hour or so, and left over-night.
In the top picture is the straight coffee, making a mellow golden colour, and the exhaust, a paler muddier version, shown on the right.
And then we tried another dye bath and added an iron modifier.
I was quite surprised at the soft green – iron is sad to ‘sadden’ the colours, but I wasn’t expecting a green. It’s nice though.
That is fascinating cig. I didn’t know about modifiers! Fascinating.
Ah, yes, the old coffee dying trick. I’ve enhanced many a t-shirt that way… Looks fab. The more golden one would be a great colour for an autumn jumper. Or socks.
This is brilliant – Shukran! (thanks!)
We have loads of coffee grinds and all we ever think to do with them is compost them. Will give this a try.