Weave Experiments

Dyed Cotton “Recipes”

I’ve did a little more dyeing of my cotton string and I love how it turned out. I made some really cute spring colors (yep I have Spring on the brain!). So today I’m going to share my “recipes” to get these colors.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll get the same results, but it’s fun to experiment with and this will get those who want to try it started. Oh and also I should note, if you try these with a wool or other protein-based fiber the colors will be picked up much darker! This is for dyeing cotton which really rinses out when dyeing with Kool-aid.

Before I start explaining how I made these colors, let’s start with my dyeing process. Here are some basic steps, but you can find more details in my cotton dyeing post:

Rubber-band some pieces of your cotton string, this helps slow how the color is absorbed into your string and makes for interesting color transitions. If you want your string to be all one color, then skip this step.
Make a vinegar/water mixture. I mixed 6 cups of water and 2 cups of vinegar then placed my string in the liquid to soak until it was damp through-out.
Remove your damp string & boil the vinegar/water mixture.
Pour your Kool-aid powder into a baking dish and dissolve the powder by pouring the boiled mixture over it. Mix the powder with a spoon until completely dissolved then add your damp string.
Sprinkle more Kool-aid powder on top and let the string soak for a few hours.
Remove the string, drain the mixture then hang the string to dry with the baking dish under it to catch the liquid that will drip.
Let the string dry over night then rinse the next day until excess color is gone.
Dry the string completely on the dry rack.

One of the colors I really wanted to dye was a lavender. I got kind of close, but it turned out more of a old rose pink. I’m not disappointed. To get this color, I dissolved three packets of purple Kool-aid in the boiled vinegar/water. After I placed my string in the mixture, I then sprinkled one more packet of purple Kool-aid on top. You can that there are some blue spots in the string, this is where I had the rubber-bands placed. I thought it was interesting that the rubber-band made the string grab the color as blue while the rest of the string came out more of a purple-pink.

Another color I dyed was a peachy-pink. My goal with this string was to get a peach color and I think I got pretty close. For this color I dissolved three packets of peach Kool-aid, put my string in and then sprinkled red Kool-aid across the top. In this string, the spots where I had the rubber-band came out yellowish. Some parts look peachy-pink and a few parts came out very peachy. I like how the color changed in this string.

The very first colored string I made came out as a light denim blue with pops of green. To make this color I dissolved three packets of blue Kool-aid, added the string and then sprinkled some green powder on top of one part and some yellow powder on top of another part. As I talked about in the last post, the yellow didn’t seem to show up directly in the string, but I think it did tint the color a bit. This dye also came out with a lot of nice color changes.

My fourth try at dyeing cotton string came out much more blended. I used the same process of rubber-banding the string and sprinkling color on top, but the colors blending through-out the string. It came out to a pretty spring green. To make this color I dissolved three packets of green Kool-aid, added the string and then sprinkled blue powder on top. I thought the blue would pick up more in the string, but it didn’t seem to, although it might have resulted in a stronger green color then I would have gotten if I had just used the green Kool-aid? I would have to experiment more to really know. Either way this green turned out really pretty.

Have you dyed any cotton string in a similar way? Did you get surprising results? I would love to know if anyone tries a “recipe”, please let me know how it turns out if you do give it a try.