Dyeing with Acorns (a Natural Dye for Fabric and Yarn)

Learn how easy it is to make all Natural Dyes from Acorns which is perfect for Cotton as well as Wool

In the past year or so, I shared my natural dyeing experiments with black walnuts, dandelions and black beans. Continuing this series, I wanted to show you how to dye cotton fabric towels using Acorns.

Last Fall, my hubby and I spent our anniversary weekend camping and hiking at a beautiful state park in Indiana.

While tackling a 7 mile hike one day, I found myself in the middle of a bunch of huge oak trees and the ground was covered with tons of acorns!

What is Acorn dye?

It is a natural stain or colorant extracted from whole acorns that have been smashed, heated and simmered. This produces a deep, warm brown color which can be used to dye clothing and paper or to stain wood.

The oaks must have just dropped their acorns because the ground was literally covered. So, of course, my first thought is … why not try dyeing with acorns?

My favorite material to dye (other than yarn) is cotton flour sack towels. These are seriously the absolute best kitchen towels I have ever used. They are super absorbent and they also take natural dye beautifully.

Note: Acorns by themselves make a lovely, warm medium brown dye. To make my towels a little more interesting, I also decided to use an iron modifier to see if there would be a shift in the final dye color.

This part is totally optional. If you don’t have any iron liquid made, just skip that part. Your towels will be beautiful regardless.

See here how to make an Iron Mordant or Modifier

Once you know about dyeing with acorns, you can apply the same techniques to other plant sources such as Black Walnuts, Goldenrod or Dandelions and even vegetables and turmeric.

What is a Mordant?

Basically, a mordant is a substance you use to make a natural dye bond to the fabric. The mordant adheres to the fabric and the dye, in turn, adheres to the mordant.

Most natural dyes require a mordant to set dye but there are a few exceptions such as black walnuts which are colorfast by themselves.

Check out my Dyeing with Black Walnuts article.

Mordant the Fabric

When you are dyeing with acorns, it is necessary to use a mordant. For my 2 cotton tea towels, I used about 2 tablespoons of alum powder. Dissolve the alum in 1 cup of hot water.

Next, put 3 or 4 inches of warm water in your old cook pot and add the pre-dissolved alum. Finally, add your tea towels to the water and stir well.

Now you want to bring the water to a light boil and simmer for about 45 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the fabric to cool to room temperature.

At this point, you can either let the towels dry for later use or immediately move to the dyeing phase.

Making the Acorn Dye

Now it is time to make your dye stock. Take the acorns and lightly smash each one with the hammer. You don’t want to pulverize the acorns, just open them up a bit so they will release more of their natural dye.

Then, place your mashed acorns in the dye pot and fill the pot with water. Bring this to a light boil and then simmer for at least an hour or two. The longer the stock simmers, the deeper the natural dye stock will be.

Once the acorns have finished simmering, strain them out so all that your are left with is the dye liquid.

Folding the Cotton Towels

For this project, you can use whichever tie dye or shibori folding technique you would like. You would do the traditional spiral fold or bullseye … it is entirely up to you.

I folded one of my towels with the accordion fold also called flag fold or suji shibori. The other one, I used the triangle fold or itajime shibori method.

Accordion Fold Method

Begin by placing one of your mordanted (wet) cotton towels flat on the table and folding it in half.

Next, at one of the short ends, fold over about 2 inches of towel. Then, holding onto the first fold, fold under another two inches so that the pleats are on top of each other.

Continue folding or pleating your towel back and forth like an accordion until the entire towel is folded. Finally, secure the towel with the string.

Triangle Folding Method

To create the Triangle or Flag fold, take the second towel and fold it in half, corner to corner into a triangle.

Now, fold it in half again – corner to corner. Repeat folding the corners together until the towel is in a small triangle package. Again, secure it with your string.

Dyeing the Cotton Towels

Place your folded towels into the dye bath. (Just for fun, I also put a skein of white, wool yarn in there). Then, bring dye to a light boil and then gently simmer for about 45 minutes.

After the 45 minutes, take your tongs and carefully remove the towels from the dye stock. You can place them in the old strainer and let the excess dye drain.

My towels were now a pretty, warm medium brown color.

Shifting the Color with an Iron Mordant

Remember when I said earlier that I wanted to try and shift the color with an iron mordant? That is what I did next.

I dipped the corners of each towel into the liquid iron mordant and it instantly deepened and darkened the original acorn brown to a more black walnut color.

Now, simply let your towels sit over night. You can cover them with a plastic grocery bag to keep them from drying out.

Make sure your bag doesn’t have any holes in it! You don’t want to accidentally dye the surface underneath.

Revealing the Dyed Towels

Finally, you get to open your acorn dyed towels. Opening and unfolding my treasures is always the best part. It’s almost like Christmas… I can’t wait to see what magic the dye process made.

With this project, I was really quite surprised by how much darker the parts of the towel that were dipped in the iron turned out. There was a very dramatic shift in tone.

Washing the Towels

All that’s left now is to rinse your towels thoroughly to remove as much dye as possible. Then, wash them by themselves in your washing machine to remove any left over dye.

That’s it! You beautiful acorn dyed towels are now ready to use in the kitchen or you can sew them into something else. I made throw pillow covers out of mine.

Now that you all about dyeing with acorns, I hope you will give this natural fabric dye method a try.

And remember, you are not limited to kitchen towels either. You can dye bedsheets, t shirts or make a tapestry or wallhanging with your dyed fabric. Let me know how your project turns out!
Enjoy 🙂
Annette

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Dyeing with Acorns (a Natural Dye for Yarn and Fabric)