Multitasking

Easter fell in the middle of a visit from my son and his family (a bittersweet visit since they were saying good-bye to our house and land here in Pennsylvania) and I thought my six-year-old granddaughter might enjoy experimenting with me to see whether onion skins could really dye eggs. I decided to follow the method that involved making a nest of skins around each egg, then bundling fabric around that and tying it with a string--and you may already have guessed the connection between egg-dying and quilting. Continuing my goal of working with some natural dyes this year, I used PFD fabric and began my dying of perle cotton thread with some PFD thread to tie the bundles.

We made four egg bundles--two with purple onion skins and two with yellow, but all were cooked together so I am not sure how the color would change if they were separated. We boiled them for twenty minutes and had a hard time letting them cool since we were so curious about how they would look (I was not setting a very good example of delaying gratification). The results were exciting--nice strong colors and some interesting patterns:

I am assuming the one on the right was in the purple and the other in the yellow but I am not sure since both the skins turned rather reddish.

And here is the fabric and thread:

The color is a bit pale so it was difficult to get a good photo, but the fabric was in the water for only 20 minutes. More is on the way, a larger piece of fabric that boiled and is sitting much longer in the onion skin water:

Stay tuned for the next installment!