If you don’t know what to do with the remains of your fruits, why don’t you try to make natural dye for your batik creations ?

In the state of Kelantan in Malaysia, several batik designers create hundreds of colours from fruit skins, leaves, tree bark, flowers, coral and mushrooms.

To produce the dye, the material is washed, cut into small pieces and then boiled for at least 12 hours. One tip: the longer the material is boiled, the better the colour becomes.

• To get a dark purple colour, use mangosteens
• For black, grey and brown colors use rambutans
• For orange and yellow, use turmeric.

The best is to use coral to produce a pearly color.  Nowadays, with the concern of recycling, preserving our nature and making good use of what the nature offers us, this technique has all its chance to become a commercial success. 

If you are interested to attend workshops on this topic, just send us an email and we will give you one address in Malaysia.  Should you try some others natural products, please share your experience with us and we will publish your results on our blog.  Good luck with your experiements!