Dyeing Queen Anne’s Lace
If you’re not familiar with Queen Anne’s Lace, it’s a wildflower that grows in fields and along side roads. It’s white, so that makes it a prime candidate for dyeing it different colors.
When I was a kid, we used liquid food dye to do the job. I don’t know if those dyes are off the market now, or just not in local stores, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. And I wanted to dye some flowers as a crafty project to do with granddaughter Ellie when they were visiting here earlier this month.
I tried some tubes of “write-on” icing I had to color the water, but that was a bust. The flowers didn’t take up any of the color, but instead just drooped and died.
I’d about given up on the idea until Ellie and I painted some pictures.
These are really neat, because there is an outline on the paper, and the watercolor paint is only absorbed inside the boundaries.
, Mermaids, and one called Coral Reef that has pictures of fish.
There are also Birds of Paradise” pictures, balloons, butterflies, and oh yes! Can’t forget the lovely set of PRINCESSES which I almost bought, then opted for fairies instead. Maybe another time we’ll do the princess pictures!
That evening I got to thinking about our crafts, and figured I could use the watercolors to dye the Queen Anne’s Lace. They were in little bottles, a liquid like the food dyes I was looking for and couldn’t find. So I gave it a shot to see if it would work, and this is what we ended up with:
We ended up with yellow, blue, red, green and purple flowers! That’s plain white in the back of the bouquet.
Pretty nifty, huh?
