Natural Elderberry Dye (on organic cotton undergarments)

Remember how I was cooking down elderberries the other week? I used most of the elderberries I had growing in the medicinal recipe I put in the freezer... but one little bunch was left on the bush and I wanted to experiment with using it as a dye on some organic cotton undergarments (wife beater undershirt & thong panties) that I got from American Apparel's organic section online.

The undergarments were un-dyed to begin with, just the natural organic cotton color which is a slightly off white. (For those of you with MCS { chem sensitivities} I found that these undies were not overly chemical smelling, and that AA is doing a fairly good job with their organic line. The smell they did hold washed out really easy for me.)

HOW TO ::::

I believe there are various ways to prepare the elderberry dye - but what I did this time was cook it down with a lil' bit of apple cider vinegar and then let the cotton clothing sit in the dye bath overnight.

I am pretty certain you can get a MUCH darker color from this if you have tons of elderberries (which I didn't have anymore). Also, i think for a blue/ purple color that is dark possibly not cooking them at all, but crushing them up into a liquid, adding the vinegar and then putting the garments in would be really awesome, and likely a very deep dye.

I hung them out in the sun to dry, and as with all natural dyes the color will lighten as the fabric dries. This small amount of elderberries made a nice shade of pink... that leans on the lavender side.

Pretty earthy & cool!

Xoxoxo

Elderberries: Identifying, Picking & Recipes

This morning I noticed the elderberry bush growing right on the edge of my pond finally had ripe berries! I have been waiting for this for quite a while hoping I could finally make use of the wild edible berry (not edible in it's raw form, but cooked into so many other magical applications.)

Elderberries start out as a cluster of white flowers around the beginning of summer, which eventually turn into the tiny dark purple juicy balls pictured above at the end of summer (late august through early september).

The leaf pattern is pretty easy to recognize (see pic below) and once you know it you will realize you see this bush along side the road, in the woods, and maybe even in your own yard.

The bark is somewhat smooth with little dots, nodules similar to a young black walnut tree or sumac (but without the nasty acrid smell of the black walnut.)

I picked a good bunch of clusters off my bush - all of which were dark and ripe. Do NOT eat these raw or unripe... they aren't that kinda berry! They have to be processed in some form, into some fabulous recipe to be edible....

*

something like :::

• Elderberry wine
• Elderberry syrup
• Elderberry jelly
• Elderberry medicine
• Elderberry pie
• Elderberry dye

The tedious part is getting all the tiny little berries off the web of stems, and making sure all the wittle bitty woody stems are outta your bowl of berries that you are preparing to use - no matter which recipe you might choose. It isn't hard work, but it takes some time and care, to double check.

I had a pretty good amount of berries just from my one bush, and considered making the elderberry syrup but didn't have all the ingredients on hand (raw sugar & a hand food mill)...so I decided to just boil mine down for about 30 minutes with a little maple syrup.

I put water in a stainless steel pot to boil them with- twice as much water as I had berries.

(If you were using these to make dye, you could add vinegar or salt depending on what you wanted to use the dye on.)

Once my boiled elderberries had cooled down I poured them into a Popsicle mold to store in the freezer.... this is a great way to keep it ready-made, so that you can decide later which wonderful thing to use these berries for (if you aren't quite ready to decide, like me)!

Xoxoxox