Sunday, July 31, 2016

Breaking Wilton's Violet Food Coloring on Crocheted Roving


Breaking Wilton's Violet food coloring is one of my favorite dyeing activities.  I know I claim to have many favorites, but my youtube channel fans really seem to like the dye breaking videos.  Whenever I want to play with a new dyeing technique, I come back to breaking Wilton's Violet food coloring.

How does the violet breaking work?  Well Wilton's violet is composed of two different food coloring colors, Red #2 and Blue #1.  The red dye absorbs to the fiber fast while the blue takes more time to bind.  This means that the fiber to touch the dyebath first absorbs the red dye while the blue time has more time to diffuse and travel through the fiber - resulting in the colors breaking into fuchsia, blue and purple.

Breaking Wilton's Violet Food Coloring on a Braided Crochet Chain


Video Contents
  • [0:00] Introduction
  • [0:17] Crocheting the roving braid
  • [1:26] Setting up the dyebath
  • [3:57] Adding the dry braid to the dyebath
  • [5:46] 10 minutes later
  • [6:10] removing the roving from the pot
  • [6:37] washing the fiber
  • [7:38] unravelling the dyed chain of roving and final conclusions

I was feeling very optimistic about this crochet braid.  I figured that when I added the dry yarn not only would I get some breaking on the outside of the braid, but I might also see some pale blue on the less exposed sections of roving.


Before even unbraiding the roving I knew this was a success.  Immediately I saw sections of pink and blue on the yarn.  I was delighted!


I love this braid so much that I almost didn't want to unravel it.  I wanted to hang it on my wall and see the ombre effect that had overtaken my fiber.


However, since I was making a video I needed to unbraid it.  I'm so glad I did!  The transitions of color are stunning and it couldn't have worked out any better.  


This fiber demanded to be spun really quickly.  This pull was so strong that I decided to have a little extra fun with the spinning.  Stay tuned for tomorrow and you'll hear some more about it!