Dye Your Easter Eggs Naturally… and So Much More

If you’ve thought about dyeing your own Easter eggs or have tried with limited success, there’s a new book that will inspire you to dye your own and a lot more. Open up A Garden to Dye For (St. Martin’s Press) and enter the world of using kitchen scraps and plants from your garden to create beautiful, natural dyes.

Budding botanical alchemist Chris McLaughlin is the author of the book, and she artfully guides you through the process of growing, harvesting, and using plant materials to create stunning dyes for a wide variety of items, including clothing like scarves. The author started experimenting with plant dyes 20 years ago after reading an article on dyeing eggs naturally using plants.

“For a long time, I played around with this subject, pounding flowers for color,” says the garden blogger, whose site is Home AG, a Suburban Farmer. “When I became interested in hand spinning, I was reintroduced to botanical dyes as they apply to dyeing fiber. I was transfixed and never looked back.”

During her journey discovering natural dyes, McLaughlin didn’t encounter other gardeners dabbling in pulling color from the garden, so she decided to write the book. “I thought surely it was the plant lover that should be playing around with botanical colors, but these dyeing techniques seemed to remain in the fiber artist circles,” she says. “I decided to bridge the gap between mainstream gardeners and the hand crafter world. I wrote the book from the perspective of a plant, animal, and fiber lover, experimenter, and student of the arts.”

Since Easter is upon us, McLaughlin shares how to dye gorgeous Easter eggs. Pick up a copy of her book to learn how to make your own fabric dyes with step-by-step recipes. The book includes a section on more than 40 plants you may have in your garden or home right now and the rainbow of colors they can offer.

Dye Your Own Easter Eggs

Plants/Kitchen Scraps for Dyeing Eggs:

• Onion skins
• Beets
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Turmeric
• Red cabbage
• Coffee
• Coreopsis
• St. John’s wort
• Rudbeckia
• Marigolds
• Calendula
• Chamomile

Easter eggs are usually naturally dyed in a hot bath, meaning the eggs are colored while being hard-boiled. Alternatively, they can be dyed in a cold bath. McLaughlin prefers the cold method because the colors come out much more intense, and you can prepare a variety of dyes in advance. (You can read about the hot method in the book.)

What You’ll Need to Cold Dye Your Own Easter Eggs:

• Non-reactive dyepots
• Water
• Glass jars or bowls (for cold method)
• Eggs
• White vinegar
• Dyestuff (e.g., onion skins, berries, turmeric, beets, red cabbage)

Cold Egg Dye Method

1. Make the dyes by simmering the respective plant materials in pots of water for 20–25 minutes.
2. Strain off the dyestuff, add 1/8 cup of vinegar, and let the liquid cool in jars.
3. Once the dye is cool, add an already hard-boiled egg to each dye color and leave them there for at least an hour—but for the most impressive colors, leave them in for up to 10 hours.

If you leave the hard-boiled egg in the dye for longer than two hours, refrigerate it during the dying process for health safety reasons. Never use any plant materials that are considered poisonous for eggs that will be eaten. Use only safe, edible plants.

McLaughlin also suggests taking good notes and keeping samples of your favorite dye colors. “If you’re an experimenter, you will NOT remember how you arrived at that beautiful color,” she says.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of dyeing Easter eggs, you’ll soon find yourself looking around your garden and thinking, “I can dye that!”