Buy Handmade: Hand Dyed Fabrics

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Dyeing fabrics is super fun, but sometimes you just want to pick up beautiful fabric and get crafting, right?

Earlier this week, I showed you how to use red cabbage to hand dye fabric and shared some tips on making your own food-based fabric dyes. It’s super fun to see what colors you can create, and it’s extra satisfying to sew with fabric that you dyed yourself.

Dyeing fabric is also a pretty time-consuming process, though, and–as my pal Christy likes to remind me–DIY doesn’t mean you have to do every single thing yourself. If you’re looking for eco-friendly hand dyed fabrics without taking hours to get the colors you want, check out these beautiful options.

Obviously, I couldn’t talk about custom dyed fabrics without mentioning my very favorite source for beautiful colored fabrics: Noonday Textiles. Jay dyes her organic hemp fabric with eco-friendly dyes, and she does a beautiful job. There are solids, if that’s what you’re after, and she also likes to experiment with textures, like in the beautiful teal fabric pictured above.

If you’re looking for a bit of stretch, Primavera Dyehouse has you covered with their hand dyed hemp jersey in a rainbow of color options. They also use low-impact dyes, so you can feel good about your beautiful jersey fabric!

Are prints more your speed? I found some super gorgeous hand-dyed batik fabrics from Margot Myers. I asked Margot about the dyes she uses, and it sounds like they’re great! They’re called “reactive fabric dye,” and that means they’re great at adhering to fabric, which reduces runoff and water pollution. They’re also free of heavy metals. Margot also takes some extra steps to make her dye process more eco-friendly. Here’s what she said:

i collect rainwater from my studio roof, which is what i use to make dyebaths, boil baths and rinses. i re use rinse and boil water whenever possible. the boiling method that i use to remove wax eliminates the need for chemical solvents to do the work, and it also allows me to reuse my wax for years.

to achieve the darkest and most vibrant colors in my shop, i use excessive time in place of excessive salts or dye powders, and i dye everything in very small volumes of water.

Lovely prints dyed by hand in rainwater? Don’t mind if I do!

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