Debbi's Dribble: Yarn Dyeing - Kool-aid & Food Coloring

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Yarn Dyeing - Kool-aid & Food Coloring

Originally published on wordpress.com on 2/16/15

So the next experiment was to be the biggest experiment yet - Kool-aid and Food Color! Who knew that Kool-aid could be such a great yarn dye? It started with a trip to the local Wal-mart to buy every flavor possible, and wow my Wal-mart likes Kool-Aid. I was able to purchase the following flavors -

Grape
Tropical Punch
Strawberry Kiwi
Strawberry
Black Cherry
Sharkleberry Fin
Strawberry Lemonade
Blue Raspberry Lemonade
Orange
Lemonade
Peach Mangp
Mixed Berry
Pink Lemonade
Green Apple
Cherry

I also picked up McCormick's Regular & Neon Food Coloring.

: Kool-aid & Food Coloring mixtures

: Kool-aid mixture labeling

: oh the colors oh the possibilites

To make the Kool-aid mixture I mixed up 2 oz of white vinegar + 6 oz of water + Kool-aid for each flavor. To make the food coloring mixture I mixed 2 oz of white vinegar + 6 oz of water + 25 drops of color. I then cut up a skein of KnitPicks Bare Wool of the Andes into several 10 ft segments. For each color I put in an ounce of color + 2 oz of water. I then microwaved each segment for 3 minutes intervals until the water was clear. Most of the time it was just one nuking. After the yarn was done absorbing the dye it went into a lukewarm soapy bath and then rinsed thoroughly.

: Initial samples

Once rinsed a color label was attached to the yarn and it was hung on hooks to get ready for phase three. Phase two was experimenting with 2 color recipes, I perfected a few good browns doing this and learned a bright purple is very hard to achieve.

Phase Three involved over-dyeing the segments with five different colors - Green Apple, Strawberry, Peach Mango, Weak Black and Yellow. From this experiment I learned that Peach Mango & Yellow are virtually the same when used as over-dyes.