Food Colour & Solar Dyeing

At the last play day at craft group we had a look at using food colours to dye wool fibers. You can use food colour to dye the wool fibers in the normal method of dyeing in a pot on the stove top, but we looked at the more Eco-friendly method of Solar dyeing.

Solar dyeing does take a little bit longer than the stove top method, but it is quick and simple to set up and you can walk away from it while the sun does the work for you. It also uses common house hold items and can give you some interesting results.

If you would like to have a go at solar dyeing at home, you will need the following materials:

• food dye (I have used Queen liquid food colour)
• vinegar (I have used plain white vinegar)
• water
• clean glass jar/s
• measuring cup
• woolen materials to dye with such as:
• washed raw wool (don't use Eucalyptus Oil when washing the fleece)
• combed or carded wool
• wool tops (I have used this in this example)
• pure wool yarn, commercial or handspun
• material (knitted, woven, etc) made from wool 

• or any other natural material that you would like to experiment with, alpaca, silk, etc.

You want around 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water, with about 1 teaspoon of food colour per half cup vinegar. If in doubt, it is better to have more vinegar than less, as it will wash out in the rinse, but it is critical for the dyeing process. You add more food colour for deeper colours and less for pastel colours. 

You can premix the food colour and the vinegar first in the bottom of the jar, if you want a specific colour, or you can just add food colour to the top after adding the dye material, or you can do both. Once you have the food colour, vinegar and dye material in the jar, top up with water until the dye materials have been saturated. Then screw on the lid and place in the sun, somewhere where it wont get knocked.

The solar process is complete when the liquid in the jar has gone clear or is very close to clear. Be careful checking the jar as it can get very hot in the sun. Once the liquid is clear, remove the jar from the sun and empty the contents into a bucket of plain warm water. Carefully rinse the material UNDER the surface of the water and then gently lay out flat to dry.

This is the finished result after being rinsed and left to dry. The finished fiber has some interesting patches of colour through it, both from sitting in the sun and from using multiple dyes in the one jar. I quite like the solar dyeing technique, while it could take a week to dye, is quite an effective Eco-friendly way of dyeing fiber without the use of burning fuel or using electricity. You could also do a jar or multiple jars each day if you wanted to so you had continuious fiber to spin, felt or weave.

Solar dyeing is also something fun you could do with the children at home as it is relatively safe and non-toxic. If you didn't want to use fiber you could use a ball of 100% pure wool yarn, or even experiment with pieces of fabric made from natural fibers to see how the dye effects the fabric.

Happy Dyeing! :)