dyeing eggs with vegetable dyes - Easter eggs

Judith Browning wrote:

Kim Huse wrote:
I have seen the how to's online where people use silk ties for dyeing eggs; my question is this: are the dyes used on silk plant based or not? I would LIKE to experiment with silk ties and eggs thing; but we would also be eating those boiled eggs, so I want to know if its even safe to do this; anyone know?

Hi Kim
That sounds so interesting...and I wouldn't use on anything edible as the dyes are likely commercial ones that would likely leach toxins.  
I wonder what the method is to get the dyes to release from the tie?

Raw eggs are wrapped  with the silk, and a piece of white or light colored material; cotton, in the instance of the  article I read, also cut to size, wrap the silk around the egg, then the backing material, put into a pot, cover with cold water and 1/2 a cup of vinegar, boil like you would for boiled eggs, about 10 to 15 minutes, remove from water, let them cool, unwrap; display, there is a note from an agriculture specialist saying that they would not recommend eating the silk tie dyed eggs because the dyes used are for garments.  SO I suppose my question has been answered; and there is also a now to to do it on blown eggs...which would work as well...hmmm...an experiment for the future...

Nicole Alderman wrote:We ordered this Easter Egg Kit that comes with various natural dyes (at a really good price...I may or may not have gotten more than one kit to experiment with dying other things, too).

We got our eggs dyed today! It was a multi step process taking quite a few hours, but it was a lot of fun!

First I washed a bunch of duck eggs (both blue and white) as well as chicken eggs (blue and brown) and goose eggs. And we figured out how many of each color we wanted, so I knew which pot to use for which dye. (We ended up washing and cooking at least 7 more eggs)



First we extracted the osage orange and madder and cochineal by boiling them.



Then I strained out the osage orange and madders dye extract and then poured it back into the pots and put in the eggs. Looking back, I think I should have strained the cochineal, too. (You'll find out why, later). I'd heard the logwood was really strong, so I pre-boiled eggs in NO dye to dip into the logwood (and rub on the indigo).



You can see above that we used cheesecloth to wrap leaves and flowers onto some of the eggs. I just cut a big square-ish shape of cheese cloth, wrapped it around the egg, and then tied it in a knot. No need for nylon stockings! (I have never worn nylons, so I see no reason to buy them!)

The cochineal was supposed to make a lovely magenta. I do not know WHAT happened, but it made like a black slimy coating on the eggs. And when you rubbed that off, there was pink underneath. The one egg wrapped in cheese cloth cam out really nicely, but the rest were really interesting.



Dunking the eggs in logwood worked out really nicely. Rubbing on the indigo powder was surprisingly successful, too. My daughter loved it! We rubbed on yellow egg with indigo to make it greenish.

Here's all the eggs!



Left to right rows:

1st left row=cochineal (I love the one with the strawberry leaves!).

2nd row=madder (I really like the one with bittercress flowers)

3rd row= Osage orange and madder egg, as well as madder with an indigo tip and logwood tip.

4th row= Blue indigo ones, green indigo+Osage orange, yellow and gold ossage orange (the brown eggs made the lovely gold color that the dandelion leaf one is!)

5th row = logwood, as well as rainbow dyed ones (I dyed one half of the egg yellow, then dipped most of the yellow into madder, then dipped the tip into logwood. The other half I dipped into log wood. The blue came from indigo I rubbed on)

6th (last) row = a lovely blue egg that was died with ossage orange (with sage leaf imprint), rainbow goose egg with blue indigo rubbed on by my finger. And then the crazy cochineal black/pink egg.

I found this instructable on a dutch egg dying method and decided to try it out.  

Dutch eggs with onion and flowers

I have not had very good luck with natural Easter eggs in teh past, but I think these turned out well.

onion skins, flowers, and leaves are placed around the eggs, then wrapped in foil. I did not take before pics, this is unwrapping.


young leaves from Jacob's ladder under onion skin


These were the ones I liked the best.  Forsythia flowers made a very beautiful yellow. Siberian Squill made a sky-blue egg. The Jabob's ladder left a beautiful pattern in pale green.


All the eggs rubbed with oil.

These are all posed nicely for a class picture!  :D

Ok, spill it, girly; how'd you do those 'weird swirly ones'?

I used to work as a professional theatrical dyer, so have some thoughts on this!

First huge tip is that you MUST use VINEGAR to get the eggs to take dye. Similar to silk or wool, egg shells are proteins and need an acidic environment to react to the dye. You don't need a ton of vinegar to make this work- those commercial kits have you put a tablespoon of vinegar into maybe 6oz of water.

You will get better results with heat (also similar to dying silk and wool), so start with raw eggs, bring them up to a boil and then turn off the heat and cover them- maybe do a quick stir a few times to get an even finish and keep the dyestuffs from settling too much. Additional time helps too, but heat will kick start the chemical reaction you're looking for. You have to balance cooking the eggs to an edible state with dyeing them, which I admit I haven't mastered. I've found that bigger pots help retain the heat for longer once you take it off the boil, which seems to help cook the centers more gently so you don't get terrible green halos on the yolks.

When in doubt add more dyestuff- the more beets or onion skins or cabbage leaves you have in the pot, the more saturated the color will be.

You have to leave the the onion skin eggs in the pot. The longer they soak, the darker they’ll be.

My mom also does some with the inner layer of onion skin in the same pot as the dry papery onion skin. You place the thin onion skin on egg, top with a damp cloth and rubber band it around egg. It will give a yellow and brown marbled effect.

The only other natural dye I’ve used is red cabbage which dyes eggs blue.

Oh my goodness.

She used egg white to attach the feathers and flowers. Love this!


(FB source)

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Oh my goodness.

She used egg white to attach the feathers and flowers. Love this!


(FB source)

Ooooh, that looks so much easier than trying to wrap each in cheesecloth! But, would you be able to remove the feathers/flowers afterward?

Nicole Alderman wrote:
Ooooh, that looks so much easier than trying to wrap each in cheesecloth! But, would you be able to remove the feathers/flowers afterward?

Well, I think if you're peeling the egg, it might not matter as much.
To be honest, I don't know if dried egg white would soften up from getting wet or being washed off with soap. Does anyone else know?

All of which makes me think that if you are wanting to eat the hardboiled eggs underneath, you might wish to sterilize the feathers by a dunk in boiling hot water, and/or only use edible flowers, just to be safe.

For me, I would not worry about the dried egg white on the egg, but others might be concerned about a salmonella risk, and might wish to wash the egg thoroughly before peeling.

They're too pretty to eat, lol. I'd blow the eggs out, and then do them, so they could be saved.

My question is do the natural dyes for eggs take on the flavor of what you’re using?  Just curious.

Mary Sisson wrote:My question is do the natural dyes for eggs take on the flavor of what you’re using?  Just curious.

Only if you peel them, before you dye them, and even then, it would be very subtle, at least for most things.

This video popped up in my feed today.  It's not vegetable dye but instead, they are using watercolours.  It's an interesting idea.  I wonder how they get the paint to stick to the egg as watercolour really likes paper.

Hmmmm, it makes me wonder if you could make your own watercolor with edible lake pigments (like cochineal), or just make a concentrated dyebath of onion, tumeric, etc, and then paint that on. I also wonder if ocher clays (yellow, brown, red) are edible and one could paint on eggs with that?

I'm curious about this too.  I don't eat eggs so I forgot about that part.

Watercolour is (often) made from pigment powder,  honey, and a binder like gum arabic.   Some pigments like prussian blue have medicinal qualities.   But, I wouldn't want to eat it.