Color Journeys: From Graphite Gray to Deep Blue

Alpaca Wristers from Peru

A quick little dye job on some alpaca woolen wristers.  The natural color was a graphite gray.  I decided to dye them blue for my oldest friend, Janna.  The 2nd pair is for her husband, a musician who can play through the winter with these!

 

I used the crock pot to warm up a pot of water plus 1/4 cup vinegar with the wristers submerged, as the water warmed on low for a pre-soak.

Once the water was hot (after about 1 hour), I removed the wet wristers, squeezed out the vinegar water, and set them aside for a moment.  Then I mixed 1/2 tsp of Wilton's icing (food grade) dye) in a cup of hot water from the pot.  Stir that long enough to completely melt the dye.  Add 2 T. vinegar and pour into the crockpot of hot water.  Stir.  Add the woolens and let simmer until the water turns clear.  It took about 6 hours.  Then I unplugged the crockpot and let the water cool to room temperature overnight.  Then I rinsed the excess blue dye out over a few days.

The amount of wool was so minimal in the wristers, I might have been ok to use just 1/4 tsp of Wilton's blue dye.  They came out very dark -- such a rich and deep blue. Almost black.  I love the richness in that blue -- layers of color add complexity!

I still have to add some beading for her -- Glass Czech Beads, not the cheap painted ones where the color rubs off after a while.  She will be pleased!

Breaking Wilton's Delphinium on Pendleton's Wooly Worms

Same idea as yesterday -- dyeing 1-1/2 pounds of Pendleton's Woolly Worms on the stove top in a huge pot.  Only this time, I'm using Wilton's Delphinium Blue.  Though similar to the Violet,  Delp Blue has a slightly more tropical / Mediterranean greenish blue to it than the Violet.  

Again, I used almost a whole jar of the Wilton's Delphinium Blue icing gel, melted in some hot water before adding to the simmering dye pot about 2/3 full of water and 1-1/2 cup vinegar. 

Once that was mixed, I started adding the pre-soaked wooly worms -- not all at once.  I put some in dip-dye style, but waited until the color changed to add more -- from purple to blue to greenish blue at the end.  And of course the darker worms that were over-dyed became w hole new color altogether.  

And this is how the colors broke.  I'm so pleased with this! 

 

 Here are the woolly worms laid out on the drying racks.

Very nice color range from the 1 pot of dye!

I am looking forward to sewing the strips end-to-end.  I can randomly pull worms from the batch and sew, and I think it will all come together as a nice rug someday!

Here is a side-by-side comparison of Delphinium Blue (left) with the Violet batch (right).

Breaking Wilton's Violet on Pendleton's Woolly Worms

I wanted to try larger batches (1-2 pounds) of the Pendleton Strips (selvedges or woolly worms).  I was curious to know how much dye was required to sufficiently color a pound (or two) of wool fiber in this form.

Rebecca at Chem Knits typically uses 1/2 tsp per 100 grams of wool yarn
          with 3 Tablespoons White Vinegar.

So I did some math conversions and came up with the following :

1 pound = 454 grams

2-1/4 tsp dye per 1 pound of wool fiber
3/4 cup  + 1-1/2 tsp Vinegar

I had to use the stove stop and a big pot as 1-pound of fiber is too much to fit into the slow cooker pot. Though it works great for smaller batches, and the yarn.

I wound up using 1 entire jar (1 oz) of Wilton's Violet for this big pot / batch.
I dissolved the gel in a mason jar of hot water.  (Wear gloves, or your hands will get pink!)

I pre-soaked the woolly worms in a separate bucket with warm water.
I had a big pot on the stove about 1/2 full of water set to simmer with the vinegar.

Once the water was hot enough, I turned down the heat, added the dye concentrate, and started to add the fiber -- NOT all at once, but in big handfuls. Then I'd wait for the color to change before adding the next chunk -- very similar to the dip dye process.  I was counting on the colors breaking so that I'd have some nice variation with the overall batch.    That way, I can pull worms out of the bag at random and know that all the colors will work together in a given rug.

It appears to be working beautifully!   I got a lovely variety of "broken" violet colors in this batch.

Here's what I started with -- 1-1/2 pounds of cream and gray woolly worm strips.

This is the light and dark mix of woolly worms I started with -- knowing that different shades would take the dye differently and leave me with a nice mix that would all go together.
This will make a lovely rug someday!

Here's  a direct comparison of the Pendleton Woolly Worms dyed 

with Delphinium Blue (left) and Violet (right).

Breaking Wilton's Violet with Dye Pot Weekly on Marled Wool Yarn

I started watching The Dye Pot Weekly Series on YouTube by Rebecca from ChemKnits.  She's been doing some really neat experiments, and demonstrating some excellent and varied techniques for dying wool yarn, especially with food coloring.  So I decided to play along -- at least for some of them.  At this point, she's up to over 100 videos, so I have quite a bit of catch-up to do!

The basket above is hand-dyed yarn from my very productive weekend of dying fibers!  This is all dyed with Wilton's Violet icing dye (food coloring).  You can literally "break" into into the compnent colors to get this kind of variation.

I picked up some marled Fisherman's Wool yarn at Joann's, along with the Wilton's Violet icing food coloring with the intention of breaking it, just like she did in the video.  The yarn comes in an 8-oz. skein or 227 grams and 465 yards.  I broke it into 2 working hanks for this project, each about 113 grams.  The label says it's "100%virgin wool containing natural oils."  It's a medium weight - 4 - yarn.  I guess the important thing is that it's a 4 that I recognize as a medium weight #4 yarn.   It took up the dye readily, and other than soaking it in room temperature tap water, it did not need scouring.

Here is ChemKnit's video for reference, in case you want to try it, too:


The beauty of using some of these techniques is that the Wilton's food coloring is safe to use in your kitchen.  I don't feel like I have to go down to my freezing cold, wet studio in the basement to do this level of crafting.  I can stay right in the kitchen to work this color magic!

General directions:

• Pre-soak 100 grams of wool yarn (in a skeined loop) in room temperature water for 20-30 minutes

•  Simmer 8 cups water (approximate) with
• 1 T white vinegar

• Melt 1/2 tsp Wilton's Violet icing gel in
• 1/2 cup hot water

When the yarn is sufficiently pre-soaked, and your water is simmering, add the dye to the simmering pot.    Squeeze out the water from your pre-soaked yarn.  You want the yarn to take up the dye, which will make it easier if it's not already water-logged.

Begin dip-dying the yarn [Refer to Rebecca's video for the proper technique.]   For example, you may want to put in 1/3 (or less) to begin with.  When the reds seem to be taken up (the color of the dye in the pot will change to a darker blue), put in the next 1/3 of the yarn hank and dip and let it sit for 5 minutes.   When the color of the dye changes to a lighter blue, put in the rest of the yarn.  At this point, Rebecca says to add 2 more T of white vinegar to help the remaining blues take up.  Let sit for 5-10 minutes.

You'll know it's done when the water  in the dye pot is clear (This always amazes me!).  That means the dye has been taken up by the yarn.  In all my experiments this wkd, there remained some blue dye in the pot -- even if I let it sit for hours to cool.

Then you can remove the yarn from the dye pot.  Once it's cool, you can wash with a little Dawn dish soap, and rinse until the water runs clear.

I did it twice with different results --mostly due to technique, I think.

Fresh out of the pot.

The first round, I tried to follow the video as closely as possible, but I don't think I fully understood the dip dye technique, and dumped in the full hank of yarn before the color changes.  I think I was thinking about space dyeing.  That's why the first hank is pretty uniformly raspberry and purple -- no blues.

THis one shows some of the marled yarn I stared with, so you can see what a difference the dye makes-- even if it is "just" food coloring.

This is how it looked after it was dry and ready for presentation.  

Different purples, but not so broken yet.

Using the Crock Pot on the Second Round
For the second round, I used the crock pot which is a method I'm more comfortable with.   I did the pre-soaking in the crock pot with 1/4 cup vinegar.  I set the crock-pot to low and left it for 2 hours for the pre-soak.     I ran out to do some errands (one of which was to purchase more wool yarn for these experiments!)     When I got back, I mixed until dissolved:

• 1/2 tsp Wilton's Violet 
• in 1 cup hot water 
• plus 2 T white vinegar.

When pre-soaking your yarn in the crock pot, pull it out and squeeze the vinegar water back into the pot.  Set the wet yarn aside for a bit.    Pour in the dye mix, but don't stir the pot ...

This time, I held back the full hank of yarn to give the different color components of the dye a chance to take up at different times.  So for about 10 minutes, I had 2/3 the hank hanging out of the pot while the magentas struck.  The second color to take was the purple, so I let it sit for another 5-10 minutes. then finally the blues.   When the dye is a lighter blue, I made an opening in the pot, and poured in another 2 T. white vinegar, then put in the remaining yarn.

You can tell when the change happens because it's very visual : the water in the dye pot changes color.  It happens at different time intervals -- You just have to watch it.  It's a remarkable process!

I let the whole skein sit in the crock pot on low for about an hour.  After that, I turned the heat off, and let it sit to cool down, hoping that the yarn would soak up any remaining blue dye left in the water.   Even after the water was cold, there was still some light blue dye left in the water.  Not a big deal ...  On to the wash and rinse stage, then hung to dry.  I was very happy with what I was seeing -- looked more like Rebecca's skein with lighter blue at the end.

The breaking worked much better on this round, where you can see the magenta, purple, blue and turquoise.

I am very pleased with the way both hanks turned out, even though they are different.  Both lovely dyed yarns!

Here they are side-by-side.  Wow!

 

 This shows the variety of purples in the skein from the first round. 

The marl gets a little lost, but still a neat effect -- subtle.

I'll be writing about the other techniques in coming posts.  Stay tuned!