Dyeing Nylon fibers, with Kool Aid

I had bought an ounce of Nylon fiber at Fancy Tiger for $1.75/ounce. This picture doesn't do it justice as it is super sparkly.  Since Nylon is a man-made fiber, I decided to try to dye it with Kool Aid. It worked fabulously.

I mixed my Kool Aid packet with about a half cup of water in my plastic container designated for craft dyeing. I was worried about heating up the Nylon too much and it either melting or giving off gases (which would be extremely bad), so I added the fiber and only nuked it for a minute. It seemed to work great.  Here are my results. For the blue, I used the Iced Raspberry Kool Aid. For the dark one, I only used about a 1/2 cup of water. After removing the fiber, I added another cup and 1/2 of water and another piece of fiber and nuked it again.  I took that one out and added more water and another fiber and nuked it again. There is not much difference between the last two.  Red is Cherry. Orange is orange. The light one is a watered down orange, although it looks peachy-pink.Yellow is Lemonade. Obviously Kool Aid does not come in black. I decided to try Black Rit dye on one piece. It worked great and did not require a ton of rinsing to get the extra out, the way the Tencel did from yesterday's post. The only color that required two rinses was the red.

 I went to the grocery store and bought Grape Kool Aid as I wanted some purple fiber. Grape does not equal purple with Nylon. I got this weird maroon color, and a weird pink when I watered it down.  All the other colors were right on the money.

Shimmer and sparkle!

Dyeing Tencel fibers, with Rit dyes

I really liked how well the Bamboo fibers dyed in the last two posts, so I went back to Fancy Tiger to look for more shiny type fibers. I bought some Tencel and some Nylon.

I bought two ounces of Tencel, and it was $2.50/ounce. I only used about 1 1/4 ounce for this, so have some white left over.  

Tencel has a cellulose base, so can be dyed with Procion MX or Rit dye.  I used Rit since it was faster and easier. I have Azure Blue, Lemon yellow, Golden yellow, and Black. I mixed a very concentrated amount of dye with about a half cup of water. I added the fiber and put it in the microwave for one minute. The first one I did, I tried two minutes, but it made a weird popping sound and sprayed dye all over the inside of the microwave.  One minute seemed to be okay, but do it at your own risk. After microwaving, I took the fibers out, added more water to the same container of dye, put in another fiber section, and nuked it for one minute. That is how I got a light version and dark version of each color.  As you can see, there is not a lot of different between the lemon yellow and golden yellow. It took a lot of rinsing to get the extra dye out. I was doing the rinsing in the sink. I'd fill the sink with an inch of hot water, let them sit for a while, move them around in the water, then squeeze them out and put them on a paper towel. I did this multiple times, and even in the end, there were still some color stains on the paper towel. The black was the worst. I probably did ten rinses. Here they are after drying.

 And after I fluffed them up.

 Tomorrow, I'll show the Nylon, it is super sparkly!

More Bamboo fiber dyeing, using Rit dye

I really did want some of my fibers to be more muted than the results in the last post. So I took some more of my Bamboo fiber and used Rit dye to dye it.  I don't have a lot of Rit colors around the house. I have Golden Yellow, Lemon Yellow, and Royal Blue (and Black, which I did not use here).

I used the microwave method. I put a teaspoon or two of dye in about a cup of water, added the fiber, and nuked it in the microwave for two minutes. I mixed the Golden Yellow and the blue to get the green color.  I rinsed them in hot water a couple times in the sink. Here they are drying.

 And after I fluffed them up. I like the subtle colors.

More fiber dyeing tomorrow!