Recently I have been eating and collecting lots of avocados. They are also good for you. For dyeing with avocado, I have been drying the skins and pits in the greenhouse. It’s funny how they make good dyes as the flesh is such vibrant green. who would have thought that avocado would give you nice pink colours? I have done some post about things that are edible and dye at the same time. I am not sure if avocado gives a 

Below are my recent dye experience using avocado with alum mordant. From the top is wool fibre and below is silk fibre. They were laid on plain cotton (cellulose fibre).  They were pre-mordant with alum mordant before putting into the dye pot.

Preparing the dye

To prepare the dye, I simmer the skins and the pits altogether in a dye pot. Dyeing with avocado takes a bit of time to get the colour out into the dye pot it needs at least 20 minutes or more. As long as it takes for the desired pink colour to show.

I have use cellulose (cotton) and protein (silk and wool) fibres for this experiment. Pre mordant with alum and no mordant at all fibres. The avocado dye seems to take protein (silk and wool) fibres very well compare to cellulose (cotton) fibre. It needs to be in a hot bath for the fibres to take the avocado dye. It is recommended that protein fibres warm up together in the dye bath together with the dye.

If the cotton appears too pale after drying then re-dye the cotton fibres again in the dye bath. This so as to have more concentrated dye colours on the fibres. Here is an example of what I did when I was dyeing with amaranth.

As it’s small samples they don’t require much agitation. If not most fibres require a bit of movement in the dye pot so that the colour can be distributed evenly. For the colour to develop fully I have left the fibres in the dye pot overnight so that the colour can be fully developed.