More Turmeric Dying

Apparently you can get different colours from turmeric by using other chemicals such as soap and baking powder. I thought this sounded pretty good as they are household ingredients anyway, maybe I'm just too lazy to try using some of the special mordents like allum and things. I suppose you can probably buy them on the internet, but theres something so satisfying about using things you have in your cupboard or can find in the wild.
I decided to try and get a redish colour using baking powder and turmeric, so I boiled about 2 pints of water with 3 teaspoons of turmeric powder, then added about 3 teaspoons of baking powder. I was pretty amazed by how quickly the mixture turned red, I was half expecting it to not really do anything.

 Eddie seemed intrigued by the strange mixture and asked if he could tie dye one of his old greying T-shirts. There wasn't enough room and he thought anything orange or redish might clash with his auburn hair, so we made him up a fresh batch of yellow turmeric dye. I hadn't done tie dying since I was about 7 so I was a little apprehensive about ruining his top, but good ol' Pinterest came to the rescue and showed us how to do it! Using elastic bands and little bits of sea glass and coins and things we tied lots of knots and bobbles all over.

 I used a but of my handspun, which instantly turned a gorgeous crimson colour.

 Wooohooo! It worked! The colour got a bit lighter as it dried but I'm still pretty pleased with the result, and Eddies well chuffed :)

The Yarn turned out pretty amazingly too, with a gorgeous burnt orage colour I never thought was possible to achieve with just turmeric and baking powder.

Im still deciding what to do with most of it but I did use a tiny bit, along with some plain turmeric dyed and tea dyed handspun, to make this little friendship bracelet. I think this would be a great activity to do with a class of kids. They could seperate out into a few groups and all dye some wool with a different natural dye, and then they could be taught how to make friendship bracelets using the wool they all dyed. They could even spin the wool on drop spindles!