Dying silk hankies- second attempt

was a success!

Turns out, asking experts is a good thing to do! Who’d’ve thunk???

So, I obediently soaked my hankies overnight with some shampoo (it helps the silk abosrb water, since it doesn’t like doing that by itself!) (I was technically told to use washing up liquid, but I didn’t have any to hand).

The way I then dyed the stuff was by sprinkling powdered dye over the damp hankies, wrapping them up in clingfilm and steaming them for about 40 mins.  I used the koolaid dye (sold in crafts stores in the UK, rather than food shops…) (it stank so much!) because I wanted all the bright colours! Oh, and a bit of a dark maroon/purple for variety.

Much better than the last attempt!

I especially love the green/yellow/orange one, here have a closeup

The one on the left (turquoise/red/maroon???) looks very messy, so I’m excited to see how that knits up

That being said, I’m being very good and not yet starting knitting with them yet. I want to finish a bunch of other things and then I’ll re-evaluate. I guess this is a problem when your finished things are still stash! Gonna have to think of a way around that one… #toomanyprojectsnotenoughtime

Failed experimentation: tie dying silk hankies

Story time! One day, when I was in Hobbycraft, I decided I wanted to buy a tie dye kit and experiment with tie dying. My original plan was tie dye some shirts for work. This was a complete flop when I accidentally bought polyester shirts (for those following along at home, you can’t dye polyester, at least not with a cheap tie dye kit from Hobbycraft. It has to be natral materials).

So I also wanted to try knitting from silk hankies (please note: these are not the handkerchiefs you use to blow your nose on 😉 ). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find what I was looking for already dyed. Bingo!

Except…the silk *really* didn’t want to take the dye. It was just beading on top (I was dying onto dry silk and hadn’t done a pre-wash or anything, so this may be entirely my fault). I massaged the silk to get it to absorb, and oh boy it needed a lot. And a lot. And a lot. And it still didn’t do a great job.

I know that tie dying should leave some white space, but frankly the other stuff I dyed (underwear, so no pictures 😉 and my partners each did a couple of shirts) didn’t have the greatest white spaces, and this had too much. And it didn’t even go all the way through the small pile of silk hankies I had in each lot. This is the other side

This isn’t a big pile of hankies. I split 100g into three piles using scales for three colours, and then halved each of those for the dying, so this pile is probably about 17g.

After pplying the dye, you have to wrap it all up in clingfilm and leave them for 6-8 hours, then rinse. I started rinsing then stopped because the running water was really starting to Mess Things Up. So I stopped and let them dry while I thought things through.

And now I have the start of a plan:

Soak the hankies (colour by colour) and hope the colours even out somewhat.

Leave them to dry

Re-evaluate.

 

So, this may be a bit of a failed activity, but it works great as an experiment! Now I just need to remember to keep writing down what I do! If anyone more experienced than me has any advice, please share! (If you feel comfortable!) I’m so far out of my comfort zone, help would be wonderful! But I’m (kinda) happy to keep experiementing and seeing what happens if necessary! (Also, quick note: how do silk hankies cope with being heated up in a saucepan for dying? That is probably going to be my next plan if the soaking doesn’t get the colours I want…