dying yarn with food coloring!

I started with regular Lion Brand Winter White Wool Yarn. You can use any natural fiber for this project. You can even do tie-dyed t-shirts this way. As long as the fibers come from a plant or animal, you can do it this way.


To start, you need to unwind the yarn ball. Wrap it around something big. I used Oscar the Curious Ostrich.

After you wind it, tie a slip knot in the front to hold it all together.



Put 3 tall drinking glasses worth of water in the bottom of a big pot.

Then, in the sink, (I don't have pics of this) WASH your yarn. It's super easy.
1.) Fill the sink with about 2" of room temp water. Room temp is very important.
2.) Squeeze in about 1 tsp of baby shampoo.
3.) Put the yarn in and slosh it around.
4.) SQUEEZE the water out. Don't wring!
5.) Let out the soapy water.
6.) Rinse with room temp water until it's not soapy anymore.
7.) Squeeze the rinse water out.

Okay, now that we have squeaky clean yarn, comes the fun part. Put the wet yarn in a METAL colander. Put the colander in the pot.

Make your dyes:
1.) Get enough small cups for all your colors. (I recommend 2 or 3 so the colors don't get muddy.)
2.) Put a little water in each cup (I used a double shot glass to measure.)
3.) Drop the food coloring in. More drops for light colors like yellow and less for dark colors like red.


I used neon food coloring: 5 drops of blue, 5 drops of purple and 10 drops of yellow (that ended up being green). I used a big spoon and ladled it the dye on. You can use an eyedropper or whatever else you have handy. As long as the dye gets on the yarn.



The purple turned out pinker than I liked so I made a second cup of blue.

Now, put a lid on top of the colander in the pot. Steam on med high for 20 minutes. (Make sure you do this on the back burner, especially if you have little curious hands around the house.)

After it steams, move it to another burner and let it sit in the pot for at least an hour. It needs to cool. It doesn't need to be room temp, just cool enough to handle.

After it cools, you have to rinse. Get your faucet running and try to match up the temp of the water with the temp of the yarn as closely as you can. To rinse, kind of fill up the yarn with water and squeeze it out over and over. Make sure the yarn stays horizontal the whole time. If you hold the yarn by one end and let the water run down, the dye will get places you don't want it.

You can stop here if you want but I always loop it around the back of 2 chairs set apart. It takes about an hour to dry like this. Leaving it the other way will take a couple days.

When it's dry, ball it up and have fun!

I will post a pic of what I make with it when it's done. :)