Avocado Pit and Onion Skin Dying Results

Last time I leached out color from the avocado pits I did it over several days.  I'd bring the quartered pits and skins to a boil and then turn the pot off but let the pot remain on the burner at room temperature.  This went on for a few days to be sure that I got a lot of color.  This time I didn't do that ~ I brought the pits to a boil then turn it to simmer until I was ready to dye.  I put both cups in the pot of water with the wool but saw no change in color hardly.  So, I put all the pits and skins in the pot of water in the hopes to get more color.

And with the onion skin juice I'd retrieved from my freezer, put the two cups in the other pot of wool.  Again, perhaps I had too much wool and while this pot was producing more color than the avocado pits, it still wasn't dark enough for my liking.  So, decided to use the onion skins I'd been collecting and go for broke.

These onion skins I just saved from cooking.  But the first time I did the onion skin dying I asked if I could clean out the onion bin at the local store and they were happy to have a free cleaner-upper and I went home with a couple shopping bags full of all kinds of onion skins for free.

Here is a picture of the results.  The top row of wool is what I achieved from my dye project of several months ago using avocado pits and using alum as the mordant.  The bottom row of wool is what occurred from this project.  The first piece of wool on the first and second row is the very same wool; top was from previous dye job and the bottom row is yesterday's dye job.

The following picture shows the top row using avocado dye and the bottom row is using onion skins.  The checked piece of wool on the top row is the very same wool as the one below it and you can see the difference in color.  Same thing for wool #2 on bottom row and the one above; ditto with the orange plaid wool next to last.



You can see the onion skins do a great job of dying and I shall not bother saving avocado pits any longer as it isn't worth the trouble.  However, it was fun to experiment.