About Eco-Printing

For centuries people have been dyeing fabrics and yarns the natural way, with flowers and plants and making their own dyes for fabrics, weaving and yarns. Today we are slowly becoming aware that we can continue this practice and create rich colors and beautiful detail and texture in both yarn and fabric.

It’s fun to forage along the side of the road or in the forest to find the plants, leaves, flowers that will not only give a lovely color, but we can also use up food scraps such as onion skins, avocado skins and pits, and beets to make a natural dye or an eco-printed fabric. 

I love the art of flower-bundling where I use spent flowers (mostly gathered from church before they hit the landfill) to make unique scarves and other products. I love giving new life to something that would only be thrown away.

Natural dyes are created from the colors and pigments from plants and minerals. This is how fabrics and yarns were dyed until the late 1800’s when synthetic dyes were developed.

Yarns Made Real uses both synthetic and natural dyes for their yarns. Scarves are also made using both synthetic and natural dyes, but primarily using plant matter and natural items such as leaves, flowers, dried coffee grounds, tea bags, turmeric powder and beet juice (to name a few) to create the colors and to capture the eco print left behind by the leaf or flower on the fabric.

No two items are exactly the same due to the flowers, plants and other ingredients used. If you prefer to have a scarf with more green or tan or pink or yellow, please note that with your order and I’ll make every attempt to have the final product reflect that choice.

Care for these naturally dyed items requires hand washing in cold water with a low PH soap and line drying. Some color may seep out and the colors may dim in intensity over time due to the delicacy of the plant ingredients. Each scarf and yarn has had a mordant — such as vinegar, iron water, soda ash, etc. — applied as part of the dyeing process to fix and preserve the color.