I love tie dye! It’s a really fun thing to wear and you feel funky while rocking it. Before it was trending, I would make one each summer at (in my opinion) the tie dye capital, Salt Spring Island here in BC. I probably have about 20 pieces of tie dye clothing (oops).
With that being said, when tie dye started majorly trending in the summer of 2020, I was happy that I already had items to wear out. However, when I found myself wanting to make my own, all of the stores (Michaels, Amazon, even my local craft stores) were sold out of their tie dye kits! In my hunt to find alternative dyes, I came across multiple pages talking about onion dye. That’s right, making your own dye with onion skins. When I told my mom to start saving the skins from the onions she used, she thought that was pretty gross. It wasn’t gross though, because unlike the actual onion, onion skins have no scent. The entire process from boiling the skins to dying the shirt won’t leave behind any oniony smell. If you want to skip to the instructions, keep scrolling. However, below I have typed out some useful tips for making the best onion dye possible.
Dying with onions is ridiculously easy, in most cases won’t cost you any extra money and it makes a beautiful rustic colour that looks great all year round. According to The Spruce Crafts blog, onion dye is great to use because unlike other botanical dyes, it doesn’t require a mordant or binder to the fabric and therefore absorbs really well.
Essentially, you are going to need to collect some onion skins from either red or yellow onions, cover them with water and boil them together for about an hour to release their colour. My family goes through a lot of onions so I was able to save about 8 cups of skins easily, but you don’t need that much if you intend to make a smaller batch (my batch yielded about 750 ml of dye).
Alternatively, you can go to the grocery store, buy a few onions and while doing that, grab some skins that have fallen off others onto the display. I personally did not want to look odd at the grocery store check out with a bag of mostly onion skins so I opted to just collect my materials over the course of a week or so.
I found that the colour of the dye really depends on what material your shirt or fabric is made of. For the best results, you’re going to want a shirt that’s made from natural fabrics. Here I dyed a 100% cotton shirt, which turned a rustic orange colour. The other shirt I dyed was made from pima cotton and resulted in a brighter orange colour.
Regular Cotton 
Pima Cotton
Lastly, you’re going to want to choose a pattern for your tie dye. For the shirt pictured in this post, I used the standard spiral technique where I twisted my shirt from the middle to create a circle and wrapped it with rubber bands. Here is a great post explaining the different types of techniques in more detail that I think is worth checking out.
So with all of that being said, let’s get to the instructions! I found that one small squeeze bottle was enough dye for one shirt plus a little bit of spare fabric on the side.
What you’ll need:
- Red or yellow onion skins, from about 5 onions
- White shirt (preferably cotton)
- Water to cover
- Squeeze bottle (optional)
- Rubber bands
How to make it:
- Wash and dry your shirt
- Place your onion skins in a pot and fill with enough water to cover the skins until they float
3. Bring the water and onion skins to a boil then cover and simmer on low heat for about an hour, until the water takes on a dark orange hue.
4. Let the dye cool completely and then strain out the mixture into a squeeze bottle or a large bowl. Toss away the onion skins.
- Fully wet your shirt with water and thoroughly ring it out so that no water is dripping off of it
- Tie your shirt into your desired pattern. I used a spiral technique but there are so many different ways to tie when it comes to tie dying. Remember that the tied spots will be the white parts of your shirt. Check out some cool patterns here.
- Place your shirt over a baking pan with raised edges or outside so that you don’t stain your work surface. Thoroughly squeeze the dye onto your tied shirt. If using a bowl, dip the tied shirt into the dye.
- Keeping your now dyed shirt tied together, seal it in a ziploc or plastic bag and let it sit overnight.
- Remove the shirt from the bag and remove all of the rubber bands and lay the shirt flat to dry.
- After the dyed shirt is 100% dry, toss it in the dryer for 30 min or so to really seal the colour in.
- Wear it out! The mixture has no smell so your shirt will be good to go as soon as it comes out of the dryer and remember to hand wash only! 🙂
With typical tie dye, some people soak their finished products in a vinegar solution. Don’t do this. I made the mistake of doing so at first. It took out all of the colour from my shirt and I had to repeat the process (thankfully I had a lot of dye left over)!
So far, I haven’t been brave enough to put my shirt through the spin cycle and have been handwashing it to preserve the color as best as possible. If you’re feeling brave, by all means stick it in the wash, but just know that I can’t vouch for what will happen!
If you have any questions, feel free to comment under this post or shoot me a DM through my contact page or on Instagram :). Happy dyeing!
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