What Colour do Onion Skins Make? Viking Era Natural Dyes
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I recently participated in a natural dyes workshop, put on by Fjellborg, the Viking group I have joined in Denver. It was so much fun and I learned masses.
All the linen and wool which we wanted to dye had to first be mordanted to open up the fibres so that it would hold the dye better. This means that it was left to soak overnight in a solution of either water and iron, or water and alum. The iron mordant tends to give a browner, earthier colour, and the alum mordant usually gives a brighter or pinker colour. I say ‘tends to’ and ‘usually’ because as you will see, natural dyes can be unpredictable!
We had six dye baths going: walnut, nettle, madder, onion skins, weld and cochineal.
Walnut
The part of the walnut which makes the dye is the outer husk, rather than the inner shell of the nut. This one was started the night before because it needs time to thicken. Walnut gives various shades of brown.
Nettle
Nettle usually gives a soft, muted green. We used dried nettle because the nettle problem which previously supplied fresh nettles had been solved. It turns out that dried nettles do not work at all. This was an abject failure!
Madder
Madder is a dried root, which is weighed dry and then ground up with water to make a paste. This is then diluted with the desired amount of water and simmered for about an hour. Madder usually produces various reddish, pinkish or orangeish colours.
Our madder dye bath produced one of the surprises of the day – my linen hood. It had been in the iron mordant all night, and I was hoping for a nice muted orange colour. After about 20 minutes in the dye, the linen had barely changed colour. It didn’t look like it was taking up any dye at all. So I left it in a bit longer, checking it every so often. When it eventually started to show evidence of colour change it had been in for nearly an hour. At that point I decided to give up and take it out. When I rinsed it out, lo and behold, it was PURPLE! We were (and still are) all gobsmacked. As it dried it faded to a lilac. So I now have an accidentally lilac hood!
Onion skins
We used yellow onion skins, which give various yellow and brown colours. They took an hour or so to cook down, and I was impressed by how much colour came out. I dyed one of my skeins of yarn and a linen piece, both with an alum mordant, in the onion skins. The wool had about 6 minutes, and the linen had about 30. It was fascinating to see how much better the wool took the dye compared to the linen. They both came out a lovely yellow colour, the wool a bit more vibrant than the linen.
Weld
Weld is a wildflower which grows in the UK and Scandinavia. It is banned in Colorado as a ‘noxious weed’, so we used dried. Like the madder and onion skins, Weld needs to be simmered for about an hour. I did my other skein of yarn and second linen piece in this one, both with an iron mordant. The wool had about ten minutes and the linen had about 20. Both came out a muted green, with the wool being darker than the linen. The Weld produced another surprise for the day: both wool and linen with an alum mordant came out nearly neon yellow! The linen was particularly bright.
Cochineal
Cochineal are bugs, which produce a red dye when dried. The Vikings would have found theirs in Poland, but ours came from Peru. The items with alum mordant came out varying shades of pink, and the iron mordants produced darker purpley colours.
What a fun project – and what lovely colors!
Wow, this is so interesting and looks like fun too! I never would have thought of onion skins.
Wow! How cool and organic! So trying this! Thanks for getting my creative juices flowing!
Let me know if you’d like more info on the process. I’d love to see what you make!
The purple came out so pretty! I’m so impressed that you even tried dying things – what a cool day!
This is so amazing! The colors you got are beautiful! I had no idea you could use onion skins to produce colors and dye. Very interesting!
What an interesting article. I’m not very crafty so I guess I never really thought about how dyes were made. Thanks for the information
What an art! Love the colors, especially the purple.
What a fascinating idea! I’ve often looked at fruit juices and despaired of the kids spilling them down their clothes. But I can honestly say it’s never crossed my mind that you could dye fabric with onion skins!
I’m kind of tempted to have a go with an old shirt, one that could use sprucing up. Some of those colours you showed are really lovely!
This is so cool!! Love the way the purple turned out!
Wow, these are beautiful natural dye, amazing!
Beautiful colors. It must be such fun for your group to replicate processes done all those years ago!
This is so interesting! I’m so fascinated by history and the everyday lives of people.
The colors of nature!
This is both fascinating and so basic to history. Thank yoy for sharing your experience. Those plants make pretty colors!
This is so cool! I especially love that beautiful purple. When I think about how things like this even became a thing, I wonder about how they got started. I mean, who would think to use insects to get a color?!?
I often wonder the same thing! Sometimes I think it must have been children playing in the dirt. Child: Smash the bugs! *starts raining* Child: oooh pretty red!
I love knitting, so seeing how they dye yarns would be really cool for me. I know beet is used as a natural dye too and pomegranates lol
Yes, beets and pomegranate are also used, but not in the Viking era. They were not commonly known in Europe and Scandinavia until much later. I’ve been using my Onion Skin yarn to learn Naalbinding, which is often described as an early forerunner of knitting. What types of things do you knit?
Those colors are great! I never thought about using onion skins in this way. I love how you keep it authentic to the Viking era like this.
This was really cool to read about! I’m from
Norway so I obviously know a ton about the Vikings, and I’ve heard of this many times, but never about the actual process. Really cool!
I think it’s really cool that you’re able to connect with a local group and create things together. I love how they turned out!
What an interesting practice. I have only ever used traditional dyes, but would love to try using natural dyes!!