No I'm not cooking, I'm dying!!
I have a string of shells on cotton webbing that I want to use as a decoration on a beach bag. The cotton webbing is light off white and the fabric on the bag is yellow, red, orange batik in a stripe that resembles a sun set.
The webbing was too white so husband and I went into the kitchen and started pulling out all sorts of things to dye with. I tried tea (too subtle), curry (nice but a little too much on the brown side), paprika (too subtle), and tumeric (nice!). I then tried a mixture of all three which was a nice "natural" shade of straw, good hue but not the look I wanted.
I also wanted a little less uniformity in color than just yellow or brown so I dyed a piece in tumeric until I had a nice bright yellow, rinsed it, then while it was still really wet I put tiny dabs of red food coloring on it and PRESTO BANGO ... SUNSET!!!
From what I've read, tumeric dye isn't very colorfast. I'm not too worried about it coming out in the wash, but tumeric is also suseptable to sun fade. Being that it's a beach bag ...
... will setting it in a vinegar bath be enough or should I use retayne? Will either of them work for sun fade as opposed to wash fade??