Kool-Aid and Food Colors for Fiber.

Some people are amazed when I tell them you can dye wool with Kool-Aid or other food colorings.  To be honest, even I was a bit skeptical in the beginning!  After I tried it, I was sold!  I never drink the stuff as I try to keep my family away from consuming artificial colors or flavors, but boy do they produce some beautiful colors on fleece.  Food colors fall into the Acid Dye family of fiber dyes.  I could go into a long and complicated chemical explanation as to how these colors work, but you'd need to have a background or at least a very good understanding of chemistry to understand what I'd say.  So, for the rest of us, it basically works like this.  You take a protein fiber (This won't work on cellulose fiber, like cotton, hemp, or linen.) such as wool, expose it to an acid while in the presence of the dye and heat, and it causes certain molecules in the fiber to create a new chemical bond with the dye.  This is what makes the fiber take the color!  I should add, one of the biggest reasons I love using food colors is this.....It's safe to use in my kitchen around my kids and pets.  I don't have to suit up, glove up, or mask up.  I don't have to run my kids out of the kitchen.  If my kids or I come into contact with the color I don't need to panic at all.  I can also use the same kitchen pots and utensils I use when I make pasta.  No separate pots or tools required!

Alright, let me tell you how I do this.  First, you decide how much fiber you want to dye.  I tend to dye one pound or less at a time because it doesn't overcrowd the stockpot and the dye has better access to all the fiber.  You could do more, you would just need to get a pot large enough to suit your needs.  Take your weighed fiber and put it in a large bowl.  To this you are going to add equal parts cool water and white vinegar.  You want to be able to really soak all the fiber well for 10 minutes.  Again, you really need an acid, such a vinegar to make this work.  I get the standard 5% acetic acid white vinegar that is sold at every grocery store, but I have heard of some dyers purchasing the much more concentrated version from photography stores or chemical supply companies.   

While the wool is soaking in the vinegar bath, I get my colors out.  For this particular batch, I used Kool-Aid in Lemonade, Orange, Cherry, and Peach-Mango.  It smelled very fruity needless to say!  I also use the Wilson food color gels you can get at craft stored in the cake section.  Some grocery stores have a few of these too.  These produce some amazing colors.  If I'm using these I take about 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. of the gel and mix it very well into 1/2 cup of vinegar.  This is what I pour onto the fiber.

After the 10 minutes has passed it's time to put your fiber into the stockpot.  I generally separate the fiber into two parts so I can add two layers of dye.  I very gently take the first section of the fiber out of the vinegar bath and lay it in the pot.  I squeeze the vinegar/water out, but you don't have to.  You'll be adding more of both once all the fiber is in the pot.  Add hot water until you're not quite up to the top of the fiber.  I use the hot water out of the sink.  Now you add your colors.  You can do this however you like, be creative and experiment!  You'll never quite know what the final result will be.  You can see below how for this batch I put the different colors in different locations.  This gives the fiber a really nice variegated effect in the end.  One word of advice, don't put opposite colors right next to each other or you'll end up with a muddy brown.  Think green mixed with red or purple mixed with orange.  These colors just don't mix well!

I then add the second layer of fiber.  Again, gently remove it from the vinegar bath and gently layer it on top of the color soaked fiber.  Very carefully add more hot water to the pot until the water comes up to almost cover the fleece.  You just don't want to slosh the water in because you can disturb the Kool-Aide below.  Add the last of your colors.  Now, you're going to add 1-2 cups of white vinegar to the pot.  Put the pot on the stove, put the lid on, and turn the burner no higher than about medium-low.  You want to get the vat to the point that it is steaming.  Much hotter than this and you can damage the fleece.  Imagine boiling your hair!!  The vinegar and heat make the magic happen!  I VERY GENTLY push and poke the fiber occasionally as it heats just to help the dye disperse, but be very careful not to agitate the fiber or you can end up with felted bits.  It generally takes about 15 minutes for the fleece to come to steaming and set the dye.  Ideally, you want to "exhaust the dye bath."  This means you want the fiber to take up all the available dye in the pot.  Sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn't.  Don't worry if it doesn't.  Below is a picture showing what this looks like.  You can see that the water where the spoon is is sort of cloudy, but there is no red or orange color.  All the dye has been soaked up by the fiber.

Now you're going to dump the fiber into the sink and soak it with cool water until the water runs clear. This can take a handful of rinses to happen.  Just fill the sink with cool water and let the fiber soak for 10-15 minutes.  Repeat as many times as you need to.  Sometimes it takes me five rinses.  If you've used very vivid colors, I've found it can take a bit longer.

Once the water runs clear, gently squeeze out as much water as you can and then set it out on a towel-covered table or drying rack to air dry.  Don't worry if color leaches out onto the towel.  A good wash with some hot soapy water will take it right out.  Remember, these colors can't dye cotton or other plant fibers.  Once it's dry you have lovely fiber that's ready to comb or card for spinning or felting!  If you leave wool or other fibers that have been dyed with Kool-Aid or other food colors in sunlight they will fade.  So for the sake of all your hard work, avoid storing your fiber in constant sunlight.  Most fiber isn't suppose to be stored this way to begin with!  The vast majority of fiber-folks I've talked to who use these types of dyes are very happy with the colorfastness over time.  And as with most animal fibers, you want to handwash separately in cold water, then lay flat to dry.  The fiber on the left was a white wool/mohair blend dyed with Kool-Aid.  The fiber on the right was silvery-gray wool overdyed with both Kool-Aid and Wilson gel color.  It was a good day!

So yeah!  You can use many colors or just one, but it is so much fun to see how the fiber turns out.  No two batches are ever the same, even if you use the same colors as you did before.  I've been getting the wool spun so hopefully soon I can get some pictures posted to show how the fiber looks when spun into yarn.  Until next time!