Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Cake Dyeing with Dye Leftovers

Last summer, I had a lot of dye left over from some projects.  I was going to use it for cake dyeing... but then as of 9/3 I hadn't done it, and in October Lucky was born.  In February the dye was still sitting on my counter, and finally by April I'd had enough and knew that I wanted to get this video filmed and edited.



The leftover dyes were from when I was dyeing the roving for Chirphead's baby pod and from hosting a KoolAid Dyeing party.  I mixed all blues, reds and purples together into one batch, and I figured that it would be perfect for some cake dyeing.  Normally I wind a tight cake, and then rewind a looser one. I don't know how I got this mess this...


Thankfully the mess resolved itself and I had a nice, loose cake ready to dye.  I decided to switch up my cake dyeing by presoaking the cake first.  I let it soak in a pot filled with water and 2T white vinegar.  


I let the yarn simmer for 20 min and got a really pretty burgundy on the outside. Watch the following video to see the progression!




I got a fancy new camera in March, and I couldn't resist taking pictures of each step of the unwinding process.  It is just so beautiful to see the cake unwind!

Here you can see the blue hints


I'm a bit surprised that the color didn't penetrate further into the cake, but then again it was mostly reds and reds absorb faster than blues/greens.  Maybe I'll try this again with cooler toned dyes.