It’s no secret that blush pink is my favourite colour, so naturally I’ve been dyeing (see what alI did there 😉) to try my hand at some avocado dye. I’ve been working very slowly on some sewing machine covers (more on that next week!) and thought I’d try some dye to jazz up the piping and pockets.

I’m the only person in my house who eats avocado, so it took me some time to accumulate the six or so pits to do a batch. I just kept them in a container in the freezer and added new pits as I are more avocado. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do the dye, so I sewed the piping and the hem on the pocket before I decided to do it. This is not recommended, but since the colour is so subtle, the thread isn’t too obviously off-white, mine turned out alright.

I used this tutorial and found it really easy. I lost a lot of water through boiling the pits, so I had to add extra water in after the fact in order to submerge the piping fully. I simmered it for the 10 minutes the tutorial recommended, and then decided to do 10 more to get it a little more pink. I rinsed with a warm bath of water with some Dr Bronner’s Baby Castille soap (in a bar) because it appeared it was the closest I had to pH balanced. It seemed to work fine. I then rolled it up in a red tea towel and squeezed out the extra water before hanging dry.

The pockets took some more experimenting to get the ombré effect. I tried clothes-pinning the fabric to the side of my stock pot so only the bottoms were submerged. I think I did two rounds of boiling for ten minutes at two different amounts submerged before throwing the whole thing in for about five minutes. This didn’t work super well, so the next day I put them in again while it was cold. I let the bottoms of the pockets sit in the pot for a good long time and let the dye soak up into the fabric. I probably let it sit for about two hours. This worked better and the bottom got darker. It’s still not as pronounced as I’d imagined, but I’m happy with it.

I do have to say that I 100 per cent understand now how addicting natural dyeing is. It’s never been something I’ve been terribly excited about as I’m not super into tie-dyeing as an aesthetic, but I can tell you I was searching my apartment for more things I could turn this beautiful shade of pink. I guess I need to eat a lot more avocados 🥑 !