Hand dyed silk ribbons

Happy Monday, friends!!! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!! I’m so excited to share how I hand dye my silk ribbons! If you’ve been around for a minute, I’m sure you know, I LOVE ribbons!!

When creating special moments, I love adding unique, handmade touches. It’s a small way to show love to my people. These ribbons would be perfect to add to a wrapped gift, to use on a tablescape, to tie on a wreath or an Easter basket, etc.

When putting a tablescape together recently, I wanted to add a special touch to the table by tying hand-dyed silk ribbons around the flatware. I could already envision long silk ribbons in the loveliest natural hue, blowing and dancing in the wind as my guests arrived.

Step one: gather your supplies. You will need some sort of natural fabric, man-made fabrics don’t hold the color very well. For those ribbons, I used silk dupioni that I ordered online. I tore it into strips. I love the look of frayed edges, but if you want your edges clean, cut your strips instead of tearing them. For the dye, you could use almost any fruit, vegetable, or even spices. I wanted to create a variety of pinks and purples, so I used raspberries, blueberries, avocado pit and skins, beets, and red cabbage.

Step two: Add fruit or vegetable to a saucepan with twice as much water. Simmer for an hour.

Step three: After an hour, take off the heat and let it cool. Once cool, strain all the little pieces of fruit/vegetable out of the dye and place into separate bowls to dye your fabric.

The longer you let your fabric sit in the dye, the deeper the color will be. I had mine sit in the dye for just a few minutes. After I got the initial colors, I started to play around with the dyes by adding baking soda to some and vinegar to others. The baking soda creates a more alkaline color, the vinegar creates a more acidic color.

Row one – left to right

red cabbage with vinegar, red cabbage, red cabbage with soda

Row two – left to right

beets, beets with vinegar, beets with soda

Row three – left to right

raspberries, raspberries & blueberries, blueberries

I put a little mock-up of my table setting together so I could choose the perfect color of ribbon. I decided to go with the blueberry/raspberry blend for this tablescape. I didn’t want an overpowering color that would take away from the beautiful design on these Sprig & Vine Lenox dishes!

Thank you so much for stopping by today! I hope you enjoyed this post! Let me know if you make some of these ribbons, I’d love to know how they turn out!