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Originally Posted by sunflowers  Nice! That's what I was going for but mine turned out more pastel.
How did you get the colors to stay so bright? My lemon lime koolaid rinsed out to a blue tone. Did you dye on the stovetop or microwave? Did you rinse until the water turned clear? Is it colorfast? Please share the secrets  |
You can re-do them if you want to make them darker! I redid my blue one this morning (before I took the pic) because it was a tad lighter than I wanted and the second time around it turned out perfect!
This was my first time dyeing anything so I did a lot of experimenting. I did them on the stovetop with approx. 6 oz. water and 2 oz. vinegar. The yellow was 2 packs of lemonade, the orange was one pack of orange, coffee, and a squirt of red food coloring, the blue was all blue food coloring, the green was three packs of lemon-lime, and the black cherry was one pack of grape and two packs of black cherry for the first dye. It was a little too pinkish so I followed up with a second session of just purple food coloring and that's what you see in the pic--black cherry coloring with a blue-violet mottling over it. It looks really nice!
I soaked the silks in hot water while I prepared the dye in a pot, then wrung them out and used my hands to swirl them around the dye pot and soak up the liquid. When it started to get hot I switched to a spoon and kept mashing them around until the dye was gone. I simmered and stirred on and off (though there wasn't much water) for a long time (20 min or so?) then took the pot to the sink, drained the liquid, poured in a glug of vinegar and cold water, stuck my hand in the pot and scrunched the silk around for a minute. Dumped the pot and rinsed with cool water until it ran clear, which was only a few seconds each time. Handwashed with dish soap, and blow dried with my blow dryer. I tested them out and they are all colorfast!
My only disappointment was that our food store hardly had any kool-aid so there wasn't much to pick from
I guess that stuff just isn't popular anymore, when I was a kid I remember getting to choose from racks and racks of purplesaures rex, blue raspberry, tropical punches, kiwi strawberry, blackberry, etc., etc. I was really looking forward to picking some neat flavors but all they had was Cherry, grape, lemon-lime, lemonade, orange and strawberry.
: I've tried Grape, cherry/black cherry, lemon-lime, pink lemonade, blue raspberry lemonade, lemonade, mango, orange, and one I coffee dyed.
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But I knew it would be eons before we could afford to do it any other way, like with fiber reactive dyes, or storebought, so we did it the cheap and easy way!
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