Last week I posted this photo on my Instagram page of some yarn I had dyed with food coloring and had some interest in how I did it, so today I am going to be sharing my process. There are a lot of photos in this post, but dyeing yarn with food coloring is very simple! In this tutorial I am dying a self-striping sock yarn, but you could use these same principals and dye any weight of yarn, and in any arrangement. If your skein of yarn came in a basic hank, you could just pour the dye over it in sections and make an awesome variegated skein!
Let's start off with what we need:
Let's start off with what we need:
-Yarn (I'll talk about this a little more in a second)
-Food Coloring
-White Vinegar
-Microwave safe jars (I think mine are 1 Quart Ball jars, I picked these up at Target for about $1.50 a piece)
-An old Towel
-Plastic cutlery (not necessary, but it makes it easier)
-Optional: Gloves and an apron to protect your skin and clothes from becoming stained. I don't use any gloves because I like to live on the edge.
-Food Coloring
-White Vinegar
-Microwave safe jars (I think mine are 1 Quart Ball jars, I picked these up at Target for about $1.50 a piece)
-An old Towel
-Plastic cutlery (not necessary, but it makes it easier)
-Optional: Gloves and an apron to protect your skin and clothes from becoming stained. I don't use any gloves because I like to live on the edge.
As far as yarn goes, you are going to need an animal fiber based yarn. Wool, alpaca, superwash wool, anything like that. The yarn I am dyeing today is Lion Brand Sock Ease. I picked this ball up at Michaels for around $6 with a coupon. It's 75% wool and 25% nylon. I don't know much about dyeing nylon or why it works, but all I know is that it does. I haven't experimented much with other percentages of nylon to wool, but most sock yarns with nylon only have up to 25% and that will work for dyeing with food coloring. You could dye any size yarn, from fingering weight to super bulky, the sky is the limit!
For the colorant, I usually use these Wiltons Icing colors. They are a gel food coloring that come in lots of colors and are easy to find at most craft stores with a baking department. Again, I got these are Michaels and they run around $2.30 a bottle. You don't have to use these, but I like them for their range of colors. You could use this same process with those liquid food colors you can pick up at the grocery store that have the little droppers on the ends.
This next step will take a little math. I want a self striping yarn to knit socks with. I want my stripes to be approx. 4 rounds wide, and I'm going to be using 3 colors when I dye it. Through a little testing, I've figured out that I need about 24" of yarn to knit one round of a sock with 64 stitches on my usual US Size 1 needles. With all that knowledge, I can figure out how long of a skein of yarn I need to make this happen. 3 colors X 4 rounds per color = 12 rounds for one color repeat. 12 rounds X 24" in a round = 288" for one 3 stripe sequence. That means I need to wind my ball of yarn into a long skein that measures 288" around. I spaced out 2 chairs and wound my yarn around them to make my big ol' loop of yarn.
Take some scrap yarn and tie your skein in a few places to ensure it doesn't get tangled during the dyeing process. I usually tie it in 4-5 places. Make sure you don't tie it too tight or you will get white spots in the yarn where the color couldn't penetrate.
Take your skein and separate it into three equal length loops. I usually do this by draping it over my hand and adjusting the loops from the bottom until they are all about the same length.
Now lay your skein out with the center of all of your loops in the middle, with each loop pointing out in a different direction. Tie them together at the top to keep them separated.
Gently place your skein into some warm water to soak for a few minutes while you make up the dye baths. To the warm water, add about 1/2 a cup of the white vinegar. This is what will make your colors more colorfast.
Put your jars into a microwave safe pan or something that will make them more easy to move in and out of the microwave. I use a 9X9" Pyrex. Fill them about 3/5th of the way up with hot water (I use the hottest water that comes from the tap). Then add vinegar to each jar, until they are about 2/3rds full. I don't measure anything when I do this, I just eyeball it. After you have filled your jars, put them in the microwave and heat them for about 3 or 4 minutes, so the water is hot, but not boiling or anything.
Open up your food coloring. Today I am using Orange, Teal, and Burgundy. Once the jars are done heating up, it's time to add the dye. I usually stick the end of a plastic knife or something like that into the dye, and then swirl it around in the jar.
I usually add dye and then take a scrap of my yarn I'm dyeing and dunk it into the dye bath. This will give you a rough idea of how the color will turn out. Add as much dye as you want to get the color you want. I'm sometimes surprised by the colors I get, and it takes a little trial and error to perfect this process.
Here's a picture of my dye baths once I tested and decided on the colors:
Take your yarn out of the water it's soaking in and squeeze the excess water out, just so it doesn't drip. Drape each loop into the dye baths, one in each. Top off the jars with more hot water so it's full to the top.
Once I've topped off the jars I take the white parts of the yarn that aren't submerged and dip them into the dye so I don't end up with too many white bits in the finished yarn.
Pop your jars in the microwave and nuke them for 4 minutes. I alternate between heating the yarn for 4 minutes and letting it sit and soak up the dye for 4 minutes. 4 minutes heating, 4 minutes resting.
Repeat the process until the water in the jars is mostly clear. As you can see in the picture on the right, the water in some of the jars isn't totally clear, but enough color has soaked into the yarn to get it the color I want.
Let the yarn sit and cool for a few minutes before the next step. It will be hot, so be careful! I use tongs to pull the yarn out of the dye baths and into the sink. Then, I use warm water and rinse the yarn multiple times. Each time I make the water a little cooler, until it's cool enough to handle. Then I continue to rinse and squeeze water out until the water runs clear.
Squeeze out the excess water and lay your yarn out in the towel. Wrap it up and press as much water out as you can. Then I use a few hangers and hang it up to dry.
Once your yarn is dry, you can wind it into a more manageable skein or ball. I space the chairs out again and wind it around my niddy noddy (I made mine out of PVC pipe pieces from Lowes for under $5)
Ta-da! Your very own custom dyed self-striping sock yarn! Now go off and knit some awesome socks!