Dyeing wool with food coloring

 I have some wool. Okay I have 16 ounces of wool, and it is white.  Time for some dyeing! I think I sometimes like dyeing things as much as I like creating things.

I am using McCormick food colorings as my dye.  I soaked my wool in water, then in a water/vinegar mixture. I am dyeing eight pieces of roving that are about 1 ounce each.

I used the microwave method, 2 minutes in the microwave, 5 minutes rest. I did this rotation quite a few times. The color is supposed to get completely absorbed by the wool and that did not happen. I rinsed them a few times and they were still not colorfast.  I ended up putting them in a vinegar water solution and that solved the problem and the water remained clear. I do not think I let the roving soak long enough in the vinegar water during the first soak.

After dyeing these, I was reading online that some of the food colors may not be light fast.  So I plan to do a light fast test on these before putting them in a final project. But they will be fun to play with in my felting class samples. 

Art Experiment: Felt dryer balls

Art Experiment is a a series of posts using supplies which I own but have rarely (or never) used. Failure or success is not important, it is trying something different and seeing what can come from it.  There are three goals: try something new, use something in my supply stash, and have fun/experiment in the studio.

 My aunt requested felt dryer balls for Christmas. A while ago (probably two years ago), I had bought an enormous bag of alpaca fiber. When I say enormous, I mean a giant garbage bag full of "seconds" (the second trimming, not as nice as the first cutting, but fine for felting). I washed all of it multiple times, but it still had tiny bits of grass and hay pieces embedded in it, so I didn't want to use it for a felt art piece. I thought this would be great project to use up some of this fiber.

I am not one to just provide boring ivory felt balls, they need to be colorful. So the first step was to dye some of the alpaca fiber.  My stash of Jacquard acid dyes was rather sad, just two yellows and a bright lime green.  Luckily, there is always KoolAid mix at the grocery store to offer me a larger color range. 

I used the acid dyes and some of the KoolAid by putting damp alpaca fibers in different ziplock sandwich bags, adding the dye (that I already mixed with water), and steaming it in a steamer on the stove for about an hour.

I also used some of the KoolAid (already mixed with water, at least two packages in a plastic party cup of water) and tried to make two-tone sections of fiber. This worked pretty well. I put damp alpaca fiber on cling wrap in the sink,  dipped one end of the fiber in one color and squeezed it a few times and took it out of the cup. Then I dipped the other end in a different color and squeezed as well.  This was super messy. I highly recommend wearing gloves or your hands will be dyed as well as the fibers.  After wrapping the bundle in the cling wrap, I put it in a microwavable container and microwaved it for two minutes. I would let it cool and if I thought there was still color that hadn't absorbed, I would microwave it again.  I think next time I would do this in a gallon ziplock bag instead of cling wrap, as the cling wrap did not really stay closed. I also dyed some solid colors in the microwave as well

Once the fibers had been dyed, I let them cool completely. After they were cool, I soaked and rinsed the fibers in room-temperature water.  I had forgotten to add vinegar to the acid dyes (vinegar is not needed for the KoolAid, it is already acidic) so I had to rinse those fibers quite a bit, as well as the red KoolAid dyed fibers (gloves recommended).  Once the water was clear, I squeezed as much water out as I could and laid them on a towel to dry.  There may still be a little dye in the fibers, so use a towel you don't like and put it on a protected surface or one that you can use a bleach cleaner on, in case the dye bleeds through.

Here are my fibers.

Close-up of the variegated fibers

I didn't dye all of my fiber stash, as I just plan to use the colored fibers to cover the exterior of the ball. I grabbed a hunk of the natural (ivory) fiber for the center of the ball and put it in a container of room temperature water. While it sat in there a few minutes, I pulled out the colored fibers I wanted to use on the exterior. I pulled and spread the fibers out, since they were kind of clumped from the dyeing process.  I squeezed out the excess water from the ivory fiber and shaped it into a ball, then laid the colored fibers over it - on all sides.  I then put it in hot soapy water while holding it in a ball shape, took it out and squeezed out the excess water, and then rubbed the ball onto some bubble wrap to start the felt process (for just a few minutes).

I put my ball in a pantyhose leg and secured it with a rubber band. I did this over and over until I had two pantyhose legs' full of these balls.  I had read on the internet that the balls work better for helping dry and de-wrinkle clothes if there were at least eight of them.  I have no idea if this is true are not, but making balls was fun for the first six or so, then I lost my initiative after that. So I pretty much quit rubbing the balls on the bubble wrap and just stuck them in the pantyhose after adding the colored fibers.  I do think the first ones felted quicker in the wash machine than the others, but not enough for me to think it would have been worth my time to hand-rub them. 

As you can see, I am not very good about making them a consistent size. You should see what happens when I make cookies, they are all different sizes too.
I then threw my pantyhose covered balls in the wash machine.  In our new house we have a fancy new wash machine. When I bought it, I saw this one had a Soak function so I figured I could still use it to felt.  I think they turned out well. I did run them through the washer and the dryer twice, hot water wash/hot dry. I will probably add them to my wash when I am doing a dark load a few times, just to make sure there isn't any residual dye before I give them to my aunt. I would hate for her clothes to have colored polka dots from the dryer balls!

Life Drawing

I am taking an uninstructed life drawing class at the local museum on Saturdays. It's been a long while since I've done any figure drawing, probably five years.  I did have a class on figure drawing when I was in college, 20 plus years ago. Since then, I would sometimes go to a uninstructed class at the Art Students League in Denver. But again, it's been at least five years.  So I'm a little rusty. I was never super great at shading, so the first few weeks I am concentrating on proportion and getting the model's form correct.

Here is a piece from the first two weeks. I don't think it is half bad since it's been so long since I've done life drawing. I figure it will probably take the whole eight week session to feel like I'm getting comfortable again, and happy with my drawings. (This is the best one so far).

Dyeing a wool felt blanket

I have been reading the blog over at and then we set it on fire and in December they were talking about dyeing wool blankets. Of course, "dye" and "wool" grabbed my attention and I happened to find a cream wool blanket at the thrift store this week for $6. (In truth, I was pretty sure it was wool, but it had no tag so I did a burn test when I got home to make sure.)

I wanted to try to "confetti dye" some pieces, similar to Carol R Eaton's confetti dyed cotton fabric. Of course she was using Procion dyes on cotton, and I am using acid dyes on wool, but I didn't think it would be much different. Acid dyes are a bit more potent than the Procion dyes, so I expected fairly strong colors.

I cut a bunch of 16" x 16" pieces for some projects and also had some long strips. I soaked these in a mix of vinegar and water then wrung them out and put them in a bucket.

I plan on steaming the fabrics in plastic wrap bundles, and since I have nice new ivory counter tops in my kitchen, I set up a burner plate on a table in the backyard. (Yay for mid-50 degree weather in December!)  I needed to color and wrap my fabrics outside anyway, since I was using loose dye powder.

Here are my dyes, gloves, mask, mesh strainer, and plastic wrap.

Here is my burner, steam pot (for crafting use only) and a wool piece on two joined pieces of plastic wrap.

I sprinkled dye powders on the damp wool using the strainer. I found the strainer holes too big and got a lot of blotchy spots. Next time I might add a layer of cheesecloth (or similar) to slow down the dye sifting.

With dye sprinkles.

I put a piece of plastic wrap on top and then rolled it up in the plastic wrap that was underneath the wool. Here it is after steaming. It's pretty dark and I don't love the color combination.

On some of the confetti pieces, the backside was nice, but I find this one a bit boring.

I don't have any more "before" pictures of the other confetti sprinkled pieces. For this one, I did not put plastic wrap on top before rolling, I folded it in thirds, then rolled it, and then wrapped it in plastic wrap.

 

It looks pretty cool but I think it would be better if I used less dye.

 Back side:

This one looks like a 70's shag carpet to me. This one was folded in half, then rolled, then wrapped in plastic wrap.

 Back side:

I planned to steam all my packets at the same time and I was concerned that the confetti dyed pieces might be a disaster so I switched to liquid dyes. (1/2 tsp dye to 4 oz water and about 1 tbsp vinegar, which was probably not needed since the fabric was soaked in water/vinegar mix).

 Squirt, squirt.

Then I folded it and squeezed it to distribute the dye. I opened it to make sure there were no blank spots, then rolled it up with the plastic wrap trapped in the rolled fabric (like making stromboli). 

The results.

 
 This one was red and yellow squirts, which became orange during steaming. When I squeezed it, a bunch of extra dye came out and I mopped it up with the small rectangular piece below.

Leftover orangy-yellow dye from the piece above, plus some added Chartreuse.

These long strips were folded in half longways, then rolled or folded to become a small packet. Each side got squirted with a different color dye.

Here are all my wrapped fabrics ready for steaming. I steamed them about 45 minutes (with the lid on), and let the pot and fabrics cool for an hour afterwards.

I wasn't worried about them felting, so I rinsed them while they were still fairly warm. All of the liquid dye fabrics did not have any excess dye in them (their rinse water was clear). The confetti dyed fabrics had a lot of excess dye and I rinsed them in the sink for a bit.  I threw them all in the wash machine on delicate cycle with some Synthrapol detergent, then dried them in the dryer on low heat.

After steaming

After steam dyeing the packets, I made a pot of black dye and dyed a long narrow piece black.

I am looking forward to playing with these, but it will probably be a month before I have the time. (And I still have about 1/3 of the blanket left for some future project).

Handweavers Guild of Boulder Annual Show and Sale

This past weekend I went to this sale in Longmont. Due to the giant flood we had months ago, they had to move their sale from the Boulder County Fairgrounds to an empty store space in the local mall.

They have a ton of handmade/hand dyed items, from dyed silk scarves, to woven reed baskets to hand felted items. And of course woven scarves and jackets and rugs. I always enjoy looking at all the lovely things.

I love Heide Murray's needle felted minis. They are adorable. She teaches needle felting classes in the Longmont/Boulder area and I keep meaning to take one of her classes.

 I loved Suzzanne McGuirk's felt steampunk sculptures.

They did have some dyed wool roving, but I didn't see anything I had to have in that department.

But I do love curly wool, and I can't find it very often. They had blue and a super bright yellow, which I bought, but passed on the dark red and dark green.

But how much bright yellow do I really need? I took out my Colorhue dyes and dyed some of it orange and some lime green.  Curly wool makes me happy!

Making soy silk papers, and other fiber papers

This past weekend I made a lot of dyed soy silk and wool roving. I also have dyed nylon, bamboo, and tencel fibers in my stash that I had previously dyed. I wanted to try my hand at making soy silk papers.  I wanted to make wispy light soy silk papers. I also wanted to see if I could make wool roving papers that looked wet felted. I love how they all turned out.

Here is the start of the wool roving paper, the bottom layer was mostly soy silk.

Then I added wool roving, curly wool, nylon, and angelina fibers on top.

This is my try at wispy soy silk paper. It has some bamboo, tencel, silk, and angelina fibers as well.

I didn't take pictures of the other two pieces with the fibers laid out.

There is a towel and clear plastic protecting my table top.  The fibers are laid out on fine tulle and then another piece of tulle is placed on top. I then used a paint brush to apply hot soapy water (1/4 to 1/2 tsp hand dish washing detergent to 2 cups) to the fibers.  I don't want them swimming in water, I just want the fibers to be wet. Once the front looks good, I flip it over and do the back. (My instructions said wait 2 to 4 hours to make sure the fibers are saturated, but I don't think that is necessary. I did wait a bit, then continued). It seems most of the instructions I saw used Jo Sonja's Textile Medium, which I didn't have on hand. I used Golden's GAC 900 Textile medium.  I applied it with a brush, just on one side per the instructions I was using.  It worked really well. I think next time I will blot the fibers with a towel to remove some of the excess water first. Also, I think I would apply the medium to both sides, especially on the wool one.  I took them outside and hung them on a clothesline to dry (Put them in a plastic tub or similar to carry them outside, as mine were very drippy). Hopefully my shrubs and grass by the clothesline don't mine a coat of textile medium!  Once dry, I take the tulle off.  I need to iron all of them, but here are pictures of them un-ironed.

I didn't take a picture of laying out the fibers on this one.  This is all real silk, laid out in two layers and is very solid. I wanted to have a "control sample" of fiber paper made exactly per the instructions, but wish I would have made it wispy.

Somewhat wispy, this is miscellaneous fibers (bamboo, tencel, soy silk). The purply rectangular bits at the bottom are silk throwster's waste that I bought pre-dyed from Wild Heathers (I bought it at a fabric convention, but I'm sure they have a website, and they also have a store now near the Denver Art Museum).

This is the piece that I did show the fiber layout above.  This is some silk, tencel, bamboo, and soy silk. I love the wispy open look of this (although the colors don't blend as well as I hoped).

This is the wool/ soy silk piece. I really like both sides so I think I will play with this some more.

Wool Side:

Soy Silk Side:

I plan to try to make wool paper that looks like my wet felted landscapes. This is a much quicker and easier way to create a felted looking piece.  The wool piece isn't completely glued through, it seems like I could pull it apart into two layers (which could be interesting in itself), so I am going to wet it and apply textile medium again to hopefully create a better bond.

Dyeing soy silk (and some wool)

I wanted to make some "soy silk paper", sometimes called "silk fusion" and bought some white soy silk fiber at Fancy Tiger in Denver.  I wanted to try dyeing it.  Looking on the Internet, it says to consider soy silk like a protein fiber, like wool, not a plant fiber, like cotton.

Since I had experimented with dyeing fibers before, see links below, I thought I would try Kool Aid dyeing and Color Hue dyeing the soy silk.

Links to previous experiments:
     See here  for wool roving dyeing (and silk scarf dyeing) with Color Hue dye
     See here for bamboo dyeing with Rit dyes
     See here for bamboo dyeing with Procion MX dyes
     See here for Nylon dyeing with Kool aid
     See here for Tencel dyeing with Rit dyes

First I tried the Kool Aid dyeing. No fiber is safe when I am doing experiments so some wool and wool/silk blend roving also get in the dye. I also found a package of wavy wool I bought at a garage sale.

Fibers from left to right, soy silk, wool/silk blend, two types of wool (Merino and Brown? that is what is on the receipt, I bought these a while ago), and the wavy wool. I used 3 to 4 packets of Kool Aid for each batch. Please note that the Kool Aid is the color in the cup that Punchy is holding on the front of the package, not the color of the package itself. I had four purple packages that I thought were all grape, and it turned out I had two grape (purple) but two were some other flavor that was actually a gross red color. I didn't realize this until I had already stirred them all up in water and basically got maroon.

 I soak my fibers in water to help absorption and squeeze all the water out before putting it in the dye batch.

I mix my Kool Aid packets in a microwavable container with about a cup and a half of water. I pour a little vinegar on the fibers before they go in. Kool Aid is supposed to be "acid enough" without the vinegar, but it doesn't hurt.

Shove 'em in. Stir 'em a bit. I nuke it in the microwave for 2 minutes (lightly covered). I let it rest for at least 10 minutes. Sometimes that is enough for the fibers to take all the dye. The water should be clear or a cloudy white when all the dye is absorbed.  If there is still dye in the water, it can be nuked some more, but be careful as I don't think the soy silk likes the heat.  Nuke one more minute if necessary, and let it sit until cool.(Microwaves vary so I take no responsibility if you have problems or issues related to microwave dyeing.)

Here are my fibers cooling down. I don't want to rinse them while they are hot, as the wool may felt due to the quick temperature change. After they cool, I will rinse them well in cool water. If I feel they still have a lot of dye in them, I will let them sit in 2" of water in the sink, squeezing the fibers and changing the water every so often. The maroon took a ton of work to rinse out. 

While they are cooling, I am going to set up my other dyes.  These are Color Hue dyes and I got the sample set last Christmas. I have only seen these for sale on the Internet, and am pretty sure my set came from Dharma Trading. These are concentrated dyes, and I already have some mixed with water in small squirt and spray bottles.

I set up seven sandwich ziplock baggies and seven sets of fiber. Again, I wet my fibers before putting them in the baggies. I leave the fibers a little wet as this will help the dyes move through the fibers. These are considered instant set dyes, so after I add the dye (a healthy squirt into the baggie), I squeeze the bottom of the baggie with one hand, making sure the dyes don't try to escape at the top. If there are any white areas left on the fiber, I add more dye. I sometimes will squirt one color at one end and another color at the other to get a variegated color. The water is supposed to be clear when the dye is absorbed, but my water is never clear. I let them sit in their baggies for a few hours, squeezing occasionally. I then poured any remaining colored dye water into a large ziplock bag with some damp silk fabric since I didn't want the dye to go to waste (I had 3 silks each in a large baggy, one each for yellow/green, blue, and red dyes).

 Per the directions, after dyeing with Color Hues, I just need to rinse out the extra dye and then let them air dry.  I had issues with a previous batch, so I actually took these out of their baggies and let them air dry without rinsing then first. When they were dry I rinsed them, then let them air dry again.

Here is a picture of both the Kool Aid and the Color Hue dyed fibers.

Here are just the soy silks.  The ones on the left are Kool Aid dyed and they became curly/frizzy from the heat. The Color Hue ones still have smooth fibers. I did have problems with the soy silk not being completely dyed throughout. When I loosen the fibers, there are white patches that didn't get dyed. In the future I will spread the fibers before putting it in the baggy or container with the dyes.

 Soy silk: Color Hue dyed on the left, Kool Aid/microwave dyed on the right.

Next time, making fiber papers!