Little House & The Farm, Part 4: Hand-Dyeing Fabric with a Modern Twist

One of the most fascinating aspects of learning about young Laura Ingalls Wilder's life has been comparing the many similarities of her interests and activities to S's own. He and young Laura (who in the first of the Little House books is 4 just like he is) both love to play with dolls and help bake and clean the house and work in the garden. However, unlike S, when Laura would want a toy doll to play with, she could not go to Walmart and buy one; her mother had to make one! And she did not have the choice of home-baked bread or store-bought-- nearly everything she ate was grown, harvested and prepared at home without the modern luxury of ovens, stove tops or even refrigerators and freezers. S has particularly enjoyed working with sewing and fabrics over the course of our Little House & the Farm playtheme (and Y has benefited from the fruits of our labor as well!) and he was very eager to try his hand at dyeing fabric with me one morning.

There are many ways to hand-dye fabric at home and certainly many that would be historically more accurate that the way we went with! Natural dyes can be made from so many plants, produce and spices you have on hand or in the garden. We took a modern twist on this and I bought some Kool-aid packets! I wanted a dye option that was safe for little hands to handle and not too time/labor intensive as I wanted to be able to squeeze this activity in while the smaller set of the small hands in this family were having a morning nap.

We used:

• Kool-aid packets in red, orange yellow, blue, and purple (we mixed our own green)
• white vinegar
• water and an electric kettle (you can boil water on stove-top as well)
• one large pot, six smaller bowls, a colander, a teaspoon
• small rubber bands
• white bandannas and white tea towels--SPOILER ALERT and little kitchen science in action, the tea towels came out of the wash white again so if you want a permanent dye job, be sure to opt for natural fiber (cotton) or a more permanent dyeing process)

*rubber gloves (optional)--our hands did come out quite colorfully, which now makes me question was Kool-aid does on the inside if you drink it!
You may also wish to protect your clothing and work space.

I prepped our fabric by soaking in boiling water and a couple of teaspoons of white vinegar. Because this activity involves very hot water, you will need adult support and supervision. I imagine working with water that is actually boiling or using the microwave (as many online tutorials suggest) might provide a more vibrant color and perhaps more permanent results in some fabrics, but I wanted S to be able to participate, so I boiled water in advance and we waited for it to cool a bit before he was able to touch it. I was more process than product focused with this activity.

As the fabric soaked, we prepared six colors of dye: red, orange, yellow, green (yellow and blue), blue and purple Kool-aid powder each mixed with hot water and about equal amounts of white vinegar. I squeezed out the fabric before we tied them off in sections with small rubber bands. Please be sure an adult does the ringing out here as the water in the pot (and fabric) may still be hot. We dipped our fabric into one color, one section at a time. We were not particularly exact in how long we let them soak but we sure had fun watching the colors soak into the fabric and mix!

When each piece of fabric was fully dyed, we removed the rubber bands and gave them a good squeeze and rinse through the colander.

It was so much fun to reveal the surprise designs made by the dye and the rubber banded sections!

I ran all of the pieces through the dryer first, even before washing, in the hopes of setting our stain in! As mentioned above, the tea towels did revert to white again (amazing!) after being run through a cold wash afterward, but they will surely still be useful and perhaps we will try our hands at dyeing another way in the future. The bandannas retained their color and are lovely cloth napkins now! We use cloth napkins (mostly purchased from secondhand stores) daily for meals which saves us a lot on the cost of paper products and waste. S is always eager to choose one of the hand-dyed napkins and thank goodness we made two, because Y wants the very same thing!

It is so incredible to learn about the handcrafts and household tasks of yesteryear. It is also such a luxury that we can travel by car to the store and buy the food and materials we need and quickly bring them home and easily use, preserve, wash and use them again. These are truly things that we take for granted! I love exploring handcrafts with young children because I believe it fosters creativity, feelings of confidence and competence, a sense of slowing down and being connected with our resources as well as with each other.

We will be back with some fun ways to use playdough for sensory play and a STEM activity related to our theme and until then...

Happy Playing!