dying yarn with food color?

Yes this really works! 

I absolutely love how easy it is to dye wool yarn with food color. 

All you need is a skein of wool yarn, vinegar, food color of choice, and a pot. 

I fill the pot most way with water, then add about a cup of vinegar. Then the dye I want this time I used two different colors to get a pretty purple. 

Give it a swish so all the dye and water mixes up, and then add your yarn. I only wanted half of my yarn dyed purple, and to leave the other side natural. If you want the whole skein one color, put that whole sucker in there! You could also drape the yarn into two pots of two different colors. Totally up to you! 

Boil until the water comes clear, I use a white spoon to see. 

I like to pull it up every now and then to see the color. But you don't have to. 

(As you can see no dye bleeding off) 

 Once the water goes clear I let it sit for a few minutes to cool so I don't burn myself. Then I pull it out and give it a cold water rinse. A tiny bit of dye will run off, but really you shouldn't see much dye rinsing off. Once I rinse it off, I give the entire skein a cold water soapy soak. I use Dawn dish soap normally. Nothing special.  After a nice soak I let it dry! 

There you go, this is completely wash-able. I always hand wash when its a hand-spun 100% wool yarn, but Im sure you could machine wash it... I just wouldn't, hate felting! I've never had any trouble with color bleeding, and I use this method to dye very often. 

Pin It Now!

Easy Geekling Onesie

My husband and I have jokingly dubbed our unborn daughter our "Geekling". I decided I wanted her to have a onesie that said Geekling on it. I found one online but it was $18.50 and in boy colors. So I decided to make her one at home! This will be part of her coming home outfit. 

It was pretty simple to make. Gather supplies, I bought Purple Chimp Print & Iron cotton fabric sheets. So I could easily print out the design I wanted and just iron it on. Note* The only thing I do not like about this product is it is not machine washable. Yet for some reason you can tumble dry it. I might experiment and see if you can machine wash it, who knows. It really was simple! 

 You need an iron, your design printed out and cut the way you would like, and of course something to iron it onto! Set the design the way you would like, and iron it down for about 30 seconds. Make sure all the edges are down tight. 

and tada! 

I think Im going to add some matching stitching around the edge of the white. I think that would spice it up. 

There you go, just a fun idea. 

Pin It Now!

Tie-Dye baby things

Im expecting a little girl in July, and decided to get a little bit crafty for her. So I decided to tie-dye a whole bunch of socks and onesies for her.  I dont have much detail on how I did this since really I just got out the dye and started playing around. I got a tie-dye kit. This one. 

Then I pulled out some infant cotton socks, and a few Gerber onesies and t-shirts. And rubber banded them at random. Then just dyed away. My husband said I got more dye on me than on the clothes. Here is how they all turned out. It was a lot of fun. 

These just happen to be my favorite. 

I had fun, I know its not a new idea but it was easy. After it had all set for 8 hours I just tossed them all in the washer on cold. Of course I didn't wash them with anything else but the other newly dyed things! But after a good wash they came out nice. I did leave the rubber bands on for the washing, and took them off before putting them in the dryer. 

Pin It Now!