#handdyeing

Hand Dyeing With Food Colors: Good Morning, Sunshine

This is a hand-painted yarn made with food colors on a bare yarn. I started with a very weak mix of yellow food dye in water in one cup, and equal amounts yellow and red food dye in another. I realized pretty soon that they were too weak and I had to make them stronger to get any color at all. But as Gail Callahan says in her book on hand dyeing yarn and fiber, better to start with a weak solution because you can always add color, but you cannot remove it. I did two skeins at a time, working on a plastic trash bag cut to lay flat.

Finally I got what looked to me to be a little too much color as I know that colors looks more intense on wet yarn than when it dries. Then, I wrapped the working plastic bag in a black plastic garbage bag and placed it in the sun. Solar heat will set the colors. By the end of the afternoon, all the dye was taken up, and I got these cheery colors. They are actually a little mellower than the image.

If you have never tried dyeing yarn before, the food coloring is the easiest way to do it and perfectly safe, no special tools or pots needed. Having been a kid fascinated by crafts, I suspect you might introduce some children to dyeing yarn and they would enjoy it.

The books and yarn I got from KnitPicks.com:

https://www.knitpicks.com/hand-dyeing-yarn-and-fleece/p/31330

It’s Hot Out, Let’s Dye Some Yarn: Blues Are Gone

I know, it’s summer, so thinking about woolly knitting projects seems wrong, but you have all this free solar power, and you need not heat up your kitchen to dye yarn.

This yarn started as a medium gray which is not a color I can wear, so I decided I had nothing to lose if I tried to over dye it.  I knew from Gail Callahan that she over dyes regularly and with success. Using a solution of Sky Blue Jacquard Acid Dye, I hand painted the skeins which were a 100% wool bulky. Acid means only you first soak the wool in vinegar. This is a commercial dye, so you take powdered dye and make a mixture using boiling water. You must use containers, glass jars, etc, that you only use for dyeing as you do NOT want to this stuff in containers or with spoons that you use for food. Fortunately, old jars of all kinds work, so recycle them, and the world’s thrift stores are full of old kitchen utensils. Read Callahan’s book for what safety precautions to take when handling dye. The rules are pretty straightforward.

I was worried that the dye wouldn’t take over grey. It did take two full days of solar heating wrapped in a black trash bag laid out in the yard, for it to take up all the dye. It did feel like a bit of a miracle that the water I wrung out of the skeins on the second afternoon was perfectly clear--Thanks, Sunshine. More heat means simply more time for solar heat, as it does if you are kettle dyeing, etc.

The results are wonderful, a vibrant set of single-color harmonies. I decided to take a look at all the others not-quite-my-colors skeins that people had given me, and you can see some of the results this week.

To find Gail Callahan’s book and Jacquard Acid Dyes which work on all kinds of proteins, i.e. animal fleece and hair, go to Knitpicks.com,

https://www.knitpicks.com/hand-dyeing-yarn-and-fleece/p/31330

100% wool hand dyed using natural dyes and traditional methods. Some of my yarns are historically acceptable to use on living history displays at reenactment events.