by JoAnn Molk I've never done much with dyes and dyepots-all that boiling and noxious chemicals and smelly smells, plus the rubber gloves and stirring, stirring-and then maybe it's ugly after all that. However, rve always been intrigued by Kool-Aid dyeing, so. when it came time to dye our donated fleece for the Wool Gathering shawl, I decided to experiment. I bought sugarless drink mixes in Strawberry, Berry, Cherry, Grape and Lemon flavors and added some squirts from my stash of Christmas cookie food colors (yellow, red, green, and blue). The method I followed was the sun-tea method. I figured it wouldn't be hard to set a jar outside all day and bring it inside in the evening, with the fleece ready to be washed and rinsed and dried. In addition to the drink mix - on sale at 10 packets for a dollar - I bought a new bottle of white vinegar to help the dye set, a new pair of rubber gloves, and two glass jars that held about a gallon each. Finally one day the sun shone, and I was in business. I kept a record of what I put into the jar so that I could duplicate or make changes in the next experiment. I put about one ounce or a drum carder ban of wool in very warm water prior to putting it into the dye jar, and I kept it there while I prepared the dye mixture. I heated water in a pot to nearly boiling, and I filled the jar about half full with the hot water and added one to one and a half cups of white vinegar, and then the packets of Kool Aid. My favorite mix was 5 packets of cherry plus one of strawberry. Then I stirred with 8 wooden stick to blend the dye/water mix. Finally, I squeezed the hot watcr from the wet fleece and pushed the fleece into the jar with the stick and mixed it with the colored water. A black plastic garbage bag taped to a sunny wall provided a backdrop to help the sun's heat do its job. I set the jar on the concrete outside the garage wall (covered with the bag) and left it. Every once in a while I'd go out and give the jar a shake to mix the dye. In the late afternoon I brought the jar inside and set it in the sink. The water was nearly clear, and the wool was red, red, red! Using the rubber gloves, I pulled out the fleece, squeezing out the dye water. I rinsed the colored fleece in warm water, a repeated the rinse until the water was really clear. Then I added a little soap to some warm water, washed the fleece, and rinscd it. Finally, I rolled the fleece in a towel and put it outside on a screen to dry. Sometimes the result was good and sometimes ugly, but it wasn't expensive or dangerous and I liked the surprise of what it turned out to be. Another dye process I tried is the popular, "copper penny blue" which uses copper pennies or pieces of copper wire or pipe in a jar of non-sudsing ammonia. Fill a gallon jar to about three inches from the top with non-sudsing ammonia and put in a length of copper pipe. Screw the lid on tightly. Let this mixture sit for a week and watch it become a beautiful blue. At this point I removed the copper, with my rubber gloves, and put in the pre-wetted fleece to soak for fifteen minutes, (Varying the time gives different color effects. Also, the ammonia mix smells really nasty.) It is also possible to do this with white vinegar, a weak acetic acid, instread of ammonia. The chemical composition of verdigris or copper acetate is CuO-2Cu(C2H3O2)2. Now all I need is more sunny days. Bibliography | |
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