For the natural dye pH project, we were assigned to create dye using a plant of a choice and water samples from 5 different locations in the city. I chose to work with red cabbage because I had used this plant before for the natural dye kit experiment and was satisfied with the highly concentrated dyes on the muslin strips. Also, the red cabbage will allow the fabrics to pick up different tones and pigments from the red cabbage dye according to the pH levels of the water; acidic water will show pinker or redder color while basic water will show bluer or greener color. I collected my water samples from the East River, Prospect Park water, Central Park pond, tap water, and bottled water.
To create the dye, I first extracted the color from the red cabbage by submerging them into boiling water for about 45 minutes. I then removed the red cabbage and put 5 muslin strips into the water where I left them for another 45 minutes. While preparing for the muslin strips, I set up 5 cups and put the water samples into each cup. I made sure to put the same amount of water for all the samples and label the cups according to the locations. Next, I removed the muslins from the boiling water, transferred one into each cup, and waited for about 30 minutes.
After the process of dying was all done, I was rather unsatisfied with the results since the pH levels fell on a similar spot on the pH scale — East River pH: 7.5, tap water pH: 7, bottled water pH: 6.5, central park pond: 7.5, and Prospect Park Lake ph: 6.5 — preventing the muslins to pick up wide variety of colors from the red cabbage dye. However, I was quite surprised because the waters showed a pH level of pure water which is 7 meaning that they are clean and healthy. I wanted to share this idea through the scrunchie that I’ve created.
For my product, I wanted to create something that can be used daily and transcends generations so I designed a scrunchie. There would be a collection of scrunchies which would use red cabbage and different pH leveled water to create different colored scrunchies. The prototype composes a 3″ by 20″ muslin strip and an 8″ 1/4 elastic strip and comes in a 4″ by 4″ box made out of illustration board wrapped with a brown paper bag. With the scrunchie itself, I included a small pamphlet explaining the process and the result of the natural dye and the safety of the bodies of water in the city.
