Saturday, March 12, 2011

Dyeing Squidoo Orange

I haven't shared step by step dyeing images in a while, especially since I've written my Dyeing Yarn with Kool-Aid tutorial. I'm now using standard food coloring much more than Kool-Aid. It's cheaper, after all. That being said, I do miss the wonderful smells!

Ingredients
  • Small skein of KnitPicks Bare Fingering weight yarn (I really need to get a scale so I can weigh the amount of wool I'm using.)
  • 2 cups water
  • 2T white vinegar
  • liquid food coloring

The materials I used for this yarn dyeing project

I did not pre-soak the wool for very long. I added 5 drops of red and 4 drops yellow food coloring. Gently stirred to distribute the food coloring through the entire dyebath and then microwaved the mixture for 5 minutes.

I added the food coloring while the wool was still in the dyebath. Since the water was cool, I didn't have much trouble stirring it, but you want to be careful if the water is warm because Heat+Agitation = felting


After the 5 minutes of microwaving, the color of the wool is a little more red then I was hoping for. (My pictures didn't really pick this up well.) You should also note that there is still a lot of color in the dyebath.

I added 4 more drops of yellow food coloring (total of 5 red and 9 yellow) to help get more of an orange color. I gently mixed the dyebath (so not to felt the yarn) to distribute the yellow dye and then microwaved the mixture for 1 more minute.

After this last microwave stage, there is still some dye not absorbed to the yarn. I let the yarn sit in the dyebath to cool, and all of the color eventually was absorbed.


A little heat is all you need to allow all of the dye to absorb completely (right picture). This means that if you are happy with the color you have, remove it from the dyebath or it could continue to change!

I am really happy with the orange color. Now I'm on to create my Squidoo related knitting project! (I am calling this color Squidoo orange, after all.)


The yarn is hanging to dry.

Are you looking for Kool-Aid packets to dye yarn?