4. How to Tie-Dye With Natural Dyes

Making tie-dye fabrics is a way to add your own personal style to clothes, bags, socks- whatever you want to make!

At Pun Pun they've learned how to tie-dye fabric from a local farmer who shared his knowledge on what leaves, roots, bark and other natural resources can be used as dyes for the process. 

Khun Ramphai teaching how to tie-dye

There are two types of dyes: one is cold, such as submerging cloth in a bucket of red clay  water and left overnight for the red clay to saturate the fibres, and the second is hot, where leaves, and other materials are boiled in hot water to release the color. This "how-to" looks at the hot dye method.

How to Make Tie-dye the Natural Way

Cutting leaves to make yellow dye

Cutting wood to make more dye

Khun Nee with collected leaves

Boiling leaves to extract color

Alum is used to intensify color

Pink, green, and yellow hot dyes boiling

White cloth is put into the green dye

After a few minutes remove cloth

Dip in alum to intensify color

Before

After

Making tie-dye is a fun way to be creative and add color and design  to your fabrics.