Yes! You CAN dye plant fibers with Kool-Aid

sweet_byrd wrote

on Feb 9, 2009 11:34 AM

Introduction

Over Christmas, I had this brilliant idea for an arts-and-crafts project to do with my young nieces. They would help me dye some yarn with Kool Aid, and I would crochet it into potholders that they could give to their mother for Christmas.

When I started my research, I found a lot of pages about dyeing wool with Kool Aid, but the conventional wisdom was that you can't dye plant fibers with Kool Aid. I can tell you from personal experience that this simply isn't true. Using the information I found on this dyeing and fiber arts page, I came up with a plan.

What you'll need

• Yarn (I used white Sugar & Cream/ Peaches & Cream-type yarn)


• 2 packets of Kool-Ade per skein of yarn


• liquid dishsoap


• Alum


• Cream of Tartar


• Baking Soda


• Microwave safe plastic containers


• Microwave


• plastic or wooden spoons


• rubber gloves (unless you don't mind splotches of dye on your hands)


• plastic colander

It is important to use plastic, wooden or enameled items instead of metal.

Instructions

• Unroll each skein into a big loop and tie it loosely but securely at four points.


• Soak the skein(s) in a solution of warm water with a few drops of dishwashing liquid in it to remove the starch. Agitate gently and let soak for 1/2 hour to 1 hour, then rinse and wring out.


• While the yarn is still soaking, mix together a mordant solution of 8 tablespoons alum and two tablespoons cream of tartar in two cups of warm water.


• While the yarn is still damp, place it in a non-metallic container (I found that a long, flat, rectangular tupperware was perfect). Add boiling water to the container until the yarn is just barely covered, then pour in the mordant solution. Soak for as long as the nieces will let me (about 2 hours).


• If dyeing more than one color, separate the yarn for each color into a separate microwave-safe plastic container. Pour roughly equal amounts of the mordant solution into each container.


• For each skein, dissolve 2 packets of unsweetened Kool-Aid, 2 tablespoons alum and 1 tablespoon cream of tartar in 2 cups of hot water.


• Pour the Kool-Aid solution into one of the plastic containers, and stir gently with a wooden or plastic spoon until the dye is thoroughly dispersed through the liquid and yarn.


• Soak for at least two hours (I managed 3 1/2 before the girls got too antsy). Pour off dye mixture and let drain (I found a plastic colander to be immensely useful here). Put yarn back into plastic container and microwave for 4 minutes. Let sit until cool, then rinse in cool water until the water runs clear.


• Still keeping any different colors in separate containers, soak yarn for one hour in a solution of warm water and baking soda (I used 1 tablespoon soda per 2 cups of water, but the objective here is just to counteract some of the acid in the tartar and cream of soda (tartaric acid) that the yarn was soaking in to make it more stable over time.).


• Drain and rinse in cool water. Hang up the loop of yarn to dry.

Results

The colors came out to be somewhat pastel-ish (particularly the lemonade -- though the grape was surprisingly bright). I'm sure they would have been more intense if I had soaked them in the dye solution longer than just a couple of hours. Even after all the rinsing and soaking, the yarn still smelled sweet and fruity when I crocheted it into potholders. They were Christmas gifts from my nieces to my sister, and the girls were VERY proud of the yarn they "made" (each girl picked out two flavors of Kool Aid, so my sister got four potholders in an easter parade of colors). The potholds I made from the yarn even seem to be colorfast.

Note that I used lots and lots of mordant (compared to the volume of yarn), since I was dealing with impatient munchkins who wanted to see results ASAP. I'm sure that one could use less mordant with longer soaking times to achieve similar results. I'm also sure that my method is infinitely refineable. But I thought I'd share what I did (since it worked), to give both a place to start, and encouragement to those who think that plant fibers are off-limits to the joy of Kool Ade dyeing.

There are all kinds of possibilities for dip-dyeing, variegation, etc, but that was my first foray into dyeing, and I am fairly pleased with how it came out. You definitely want to use gloves (unless you don't mind stained hands) and non-metallic implements for doing this kind of thing, but I easily got everything I needed from the grocery store. Next time, I'll try to get the alum and cream of tartar from a dollar store, since that was more expensive than I liked, but overall, I was very, very pleased. I'm was thinking of doing my next dyeing experiment using a crock pot.