Passive Solar Fabric Dyeing

Passive Solar Dyeing

The weather this week has been very unusual for the Midwest. It's barely gone below 90° F at night, and, with humidity, the highs have been greater than 101° F (32° C and 38° C, respectively). I decided to capture some of this free energy by dyeing linen thread using passive solar heat. Like a slightly toxic, colorful version of sun tea, if you will.

The dark blue enamel makes it hard to tell that the dye is wine red.

The setup is very simple. You just need direct sunlight, a dye container, and a clear or dark colored cover. Anything you will never use for food in the future and don't mind being stained will work as a dye pot, and a piece of glass, clear plastic, or even trash bags will work as the cover. I used my trusty enameled dye pot and a clear bin I had lying around.

Capture the summer heat to dye yarn or fabric.

I wound my linen thread into a skein and loosely tied it with some blue warp scraps. Then I plopped the skein in the premixed Rit dye and put the cover on top to concentrate the sunlight and to keep mosquitoes and thirsty critters out. I left the skein in the dye bath all day and overnight, moving it to keep it in direct sunlight, and stirring every few hours.

Here's what it looked like after rinsing.

Not a perfect coverage, but good enough for the project I have in mind. Dyeing it outside definitely helped me keep the inside of my house cool! Next time I'll pre-soak the skein, tie it looser, and stir it more often and see if that helps get the color more even.

Quite a successful experiment in saving energy and making the killer heat useful!