Dyeing fun with Koolaid for crafts

[bluemoth]

So for those of you who use yarn for knitting or feathers and fur for fly tying you will surely love creating you own colors to work with. I do not dye yarn but instead have dyed feathers and fur for my fly tying. Do not use the following directions for dyeing yarn if you are wanting to dye it. How much fun it is to make my own colors!! White or cream fox fur and chicken hackle feathers are the easiest to dye. Just clean them first in dish soap. Hackle feathers can be placed in the dye bath while wet but allow the fox fur to dry be for you dye it. Use a Pyrex bowl filled almost to top with tap water add some koolaid and mix different flavors for color you want. Add a cap full of pure white vinegar, then add your feathers or fur. Cook in microwave 2 min. Then let sit for two min. then cook again for two min. Check your color to see if it is what you want. if not dark a nuff cook more or add more koolaid. If you want pale shade add just a little koolaid to water. Play and have fun with the different colors. To dye duck feathers is a little different. Let duck soak in soapy water for a few hours. then rinse well. Soak in mix of 3 parts vinegar to one part water for 10 to 15 min. No longer than this or fibers become damaged. Then put right in to Dye bath and add cap of vinegar. Dying duck will take a long time depending on colors. warm colors fix first and faster than cool colors. As you cook your duck feathers they will change from one color to another if you mix cool and warm colors together like a little orange with ice blue raspberry to get olive. (This dose not happen with hackle feathers ware color fixes after two cookings of 2 min.) Do not be alarmed Keep cooking 2 min. and rest tow min. Your duck will be the color you mixed eventually. It will take 1 half to as long as 3 hours to dye the duck feathers the color that you have mixed with the Koolaid.. But it is worth it!! I have more than a dozen colors of Mallard Duck now to use in my fly patterns. Fox takes 1 half hour or less to dye. I am still working out the bugs in bleaching and dyeing deer hair and am very close to success. Dye the color darker than you want it with all kinds of furs. I do not know if koolaid colors fade in the sun but they are perminate and will not wash out in water.

[rjb]

That sounds nice!
My wife and I are into wild mushrooms, mostly for eating, but there are also mushrooms that can be used for dyeing. Whenever I find one of those I try it out on wool yarn. I've gotten some good results, but still haven't gotten a good blue color out of mushrooms. I find lots of Hydnum imbricatum in NM and CA, and that should give blue. I always get more of a green color with faint bluish tint. Still working on it.
I've also dyed wool with the famous Cochineal bug which is out in our yard eating the cacti. It was historically a big export for Mexico for dyeing cloth red. These days it is sometimes used as a food coloring which gets the strict vegetarians upset. They don't like eating insect products!
Rick

[bobw]

What is "koolaid"?

[vwman]

a fruit flavored powder to make drinks with. They come presweetened or you can add your own sugar.

[bobw]

Oh, I see. We obviously don't get it in this country.

[bluemoth]

That is really cool to dye with mushrooms. Some kinds of plants and trees can make nice dyes to. I have not explored dyeing with plants yet. Try a different fixative with your mushroom dye. Or do not get the dye bath to hot. This may help your color to be more blue. Also go searching for a different group of the same mushroom living in a farther away place from ware you found the original batch. A new found batch may carry more blue in their tissue if they are in different soil. Do not mix up shrooms from different locations in case one is more blue than the others. If one is more blue then you know ware to look for a bluer dyeing strain of shrooms. You can get a nice sky blue with the Ice Blue Raspberry Koolaid by the way.

If you do not live in the US and do not have Koolaid try other brands of unsweetened drink mixes. Impotent to get the no sugar added drink mixes or you will end up with a big mess. Some drink mixes do not have dye in them so always check the ingredients. I use a Margareta mix that smells quite foul that gives me a nice yellow - green. Do not know how folks can stand to drink the stuff!!

How to get some colors:
sea green : Ice blue raspberry with little lime lemon
light brown : Ice tea with lemon, little lemon aid, little orange
violet : strawberry kiwi, with a little ice blue raspberry

[lamprima2]

Have you tried Psilocybe mushrooms for dyeing?

[rjb]

Haven't tried any Psilocybes. Of course in the US it would not be legal for me to collect them, but the best book on dyeing does not list it as promising. Often the color of the mushroom is unrelated to the color you get dyeing wool. The blue appearance of some Psilocybes does not mean it contains a good blue dye.
Rick

[lamprima2]

Rick,
Sure, it doesn't. Didn't know it is illegal. Are they endangered?
Sergey

[rjb]

Not endangered. They contain an hallucinogenic chemical. The US has it on the list with Peyote and other substances as illegal to possess. Users of psilocybin often used to refer to it as sacred mushroom.
Rick

[lamprima2]

Thanks, rjb. I was kidding.

[bluemoth]

Here is my list of colors I have dyed my chicken and Mallard duck feathers continued. All meshurment's are in spoon full or 1 half spoon full or one quarter spoon full or a pinch between ones fingers. All are koolaid unless other wise noted. I am still trying to make a nice gray. But you can get blue dun by mixing Ice blue raspberry with grape and a pinch or so of lemonaid.

deep dark red: 1 orange, 4 cherry, 2 blasting berry
blood red: orange, tropical punch - mix till you get color you like
pink: 3 strawberry, 2 strawberry kiwi
mint green: 2 pantry brand margarita drink mix, few pinches ice blue raspberry
brown/olive: 1 orange, few pinches to one quarter spoon full ice blue raspberry
warm brown: 1 orange, few pinches to 1 quarter spoon full grape
Cinnamon teal brown: 2 sunny select brand ice tea with lemon,little cherry, little mandarin tangerine, mix till you get color that matches the teal - duck
cahill cream: 4 market pantry brand margarita, pinch strawberry kiwi, pinch sunny select brand iced tea with lemon - this color used for cahill wet fly patterns

Feel free to share any other color mixes you like here.

This should help all you fly tiers out there get some new colors to use in your patterns. Have fun!

[lamprima2]

Bluemoth and Rick,
Sorry for my Psilocybe joke.
I can suggest an organic dye - it is used in Russia to dye Easter eggs.
The Eggs are boiled with onion skin. Depending on the time of exposure, one can produce a variety of colors from yellow to dark brown. I wonder if the materials other than eggs can be also stained this way.
Regards,
Sergey

[bluemoth]

Onion skins could be a possible dye for feathers and yarn. You would probably have to use some kind of fixative to get the dye locked in to the feather and yarn fibers fibers. With the koolaid and other drink mixes vinegar is the fixative used.

I now have don more study and experimenting on dyeing deer hair. You can dye it and bleach the brown hair with fairly good results. Although with the koolaid dye it dos not penetrate to the center of the hair so when you trim it for spun deer hair bugs you end up with lots of white spots. Best to use it for areas that are not trimmed.

HOW TO BLEACH DEER HAIR

1. At the beauty supply store get 4 ounces of 20 volume Ms. Kay Blue Cream developer and Roax White Activator.

2. In a plastic or glass bole pore in the liquid developer first then carefully add the activator so as not to make dust. you do not want to breath in the dust. mix thoroughly till there are no lumps. let sit for two minutes.

3. With gloves on take a small section of cleaned rinsed damp deer hair and put a little bleaching agent on the hair. try to keep it from getting down all the way to the hair bases. I be leave it weakens the hair at the baises and makes some of it fall out. Masage the agent gently into the hair for 6 to 7 minutes. Do not do it longer or you will end up with 1 to 2 % damaged fibers and loose fibers after dyeing.

4. Have rinse container with fresh water ready to rinse hair immediately and thoroughly. Then rinse again in fresh water. then soak in a mix of 1 part vinegar to three parts water. Remove and rinse in fresh water after 7 to 10 minutes.

HOW TO DYE DEER HAIR

1. Soak hair in luke warm water while you pre pair and heat dye bath. One article said keep beer hair dry but this seems to cause more harm to the hair fibers.

2. Use a Pyrex bowl and heat in microwave till dye bath is 170 to 180 degrees. Mix it be for you test temperature (dyed my hair at 170 degrees) Use a temperature tester that tests above 100 degrees. I used a CDN Pro Accurate Brand, Modle IRXL400 - $12.

#. When dye bath is at the right temperature put deer hair in and constantly stir it in the bowl. when water reaches 120 degrees remove deer hair and reheat dye bath to correct temperature. put deer hair back in bowl till it is darker than the color you want. Allow dear hair to slowly dry over three days be for use. Or you can blow dry it - but this may cause harm too fibers.

NOTE: It takes longer to dye cool colors such as blue and green. Warm colors such as yellow, orange, red will dye very fast. Always be genital while bleaching and dyeing the hair - fibers are very fragile and especially so when thoroughly soaking wet.

[rjb]

Sergei:
Hey, no problem! It's not your fault if I'm humor-challenged. The proper joke when the subject is "dyeing with mushrooms" is to change the "dyeing" to "dying". Since everyone in the US feels that a wild mushroom will kill you, this gets a chuckle and everyone thinks you are correct.

In Russia there is a mushroom Lactarius deliciosus that is considered, well, delicious over there. I find them in abundance here in New Mexico but nobody eats them, and I didn't really like the taste either so I leave them out in the field. So it goes.

I use natural plant dyes also. Lately I have tried lichens, but they generally give color that is light sensitive and not permanent (even using mordants).

Rick