Thread: picture results of silk dying with kool aid~

used bluerasberry lemonaid? or something like that!!
1 bag per 6 cups of water and 2 ounces of vinegar
stove top method

cooooool.

Now I am wondering what the red fruit punch would turn out as.

What a lovely color it came out as!

Wow, what a pretty wash of blue! I wonder how it would look with swirls of purple grapeade!

nice colour, maybe i should try it with one of my old silk veils , lost all its colour when i forgot it on the clothesline for a whole afternoon...
kool-aid is considered non chemical dye , yes ? .w.:

non chemical until you add the vinegar. The vinegar is actually what activates the dying..... this was actually washed with dish washing soap in the washing machine too...it didn't wash out, so hopefully it stays. I will post more details about my methods tomorrow and some of the battles we went through :) haha....maybe you all can avoid them!
I am going to try to make myself go to bed, so look back tomorrow after my AM tea time (at work...shhhh! ) around 10am eastern time

the pics look really wrinkled, but it does look slightly tye dyed up close and the veil looks really cool- from dark to light. we have a show on saturday. Hopefully I can take a picture of Lindsey in the costume then. She bought the blue costume from a fellow bhuzzer....I can't remember who. I'll have to look it up again.

Just think--some people drink the stuff! .w.:

when we lived in colorado we used to drizzle food dyes in the snow to make pretty things:)

That's funny Jess -
I sometimes give my kids spray bottles with food coloring and water - and let them "paint" the backyard after a fresh snowfall.

What a beautiful color!! I'd love to hear about your method!

okay so here's what we did-
soaked the silk in hot tap water for 20 minutes
prepared solution- for 3 yard veil- 4 packs kool aid, 4 cups (8ounces) of water, 2 ounces of vinegar
brought the solution on the stove up to 185 degrees (F)
rung out all excess water from the silk...
then we gradually fed the silk into the water-
PROBLEM- the dye was supposed to take 45 minutes to soak into the fiber...but it took about 45 seconds! the dye solution turned clear and realized that we only had about a yard of the silk dyed!! whoops.

so, we went and bought more kool aid and came home to try again! haha. This time we fed from the opposite direction and much much more quickly

PROBLEM- we still had white spots....
so the last time we repeated and stuffed all the silk in and just let it stay warm for awhile.

Eventually took out of dye solution, dumped in washing machine- put on warm-cool cycle with a little squirt of dish soap.

The point is that it was an expiriment for sure and I can guarantee it will not turn out perfectly the first time. A few things I want to attempt in the future- create the dye solution with out the vinegar, in the warm tap water, then bring the water up to temperature....and add vinegar after the water is heated....I'm guessing the color sets because of the heat and the vinegar... so it is probably best to heat it gradually while completely submerged.

I also realized that it would probably be best to add more water than what we did because it wasn't submerged very much!

I want to experiment with yellow kool aid and then take it out...lay it out...and sprinkle orange kool aid strategically....then either use a steamer to set the kool aid, or stuff it into a bag and microwave.

Not really sure how it will end up...but I have more than enough silk to experiment!

Also- someone told me kool aid will only do a more pastel look, so unless you plan on dyeing and redying forever...you will probably have something lighter than you expect. I think you CAN get vibrant colors- because I did when I fed it slowly into the pot....but it will take so much kool aid that the acid dyes would be much cheaper. High concentration is key for vibrant colors and kool aid.

if anyone trys it out....post pics! I'd love to see other expiriments!

Right on! I bet it smells nice n' fruity, too!