February 2010

We dyed playsilks using Kool-aid using three dif­fer­ent methods.

First you will need to pur­chase blank playsilks. I pur­chased these Hab­o­tai scarves from Dharma trad­ing in these sizes:

21″ by 21″ (which is the smaller pink one– great for babies) and 35″ by 35″ (which is a great gen­eral size for a playsilk).

While you wait for these to come in the mail go buy some unsweet­ened Kool-Aid and some vine­gar. (Gloves would also be a good idea! If you don’t have gloves then do what I did… put your hand in a ziplock bag)

Pre-soak your play silks in water for 30 min­utes and add a 1/4 cup of vinegar.

How to dye play silks:

I tried three dif­fer­ent meth­ods to dye the playsilks.

First Method:
Using another sil­ver con­tainer (like the one I used to soak the playsilk in) I added 3 pack­ets of pink lemon­ade and added boil­ing water(from my ket­tle). I made sure to mix it in and then placed my silk scarf in. The pink scarf mea­sured 21″ by 21″ so it fit appro­pri­ately in the con­tainer.
I left it in for a few min­utes until the water it was soak­ing in turned clear. (Maybe 3–4 min­utes). I then rinsed it out and sur­pris­ingly no color ran. Laid it out to dry and it looks great.

Its the per­fect size to play peek-a-boo with Aaliya.

Method Two: On the stove.

Add 3 Kool-aid Packet to pots.

Add a lit­tle bit of hot water to mix the color in. Let it sim­mer for a minute while you wring out your play silk from the pre-soak.

Add in your play silk and hot water to cover the silk. (Its impor­tant to remem­ber that the more water you add the lighter the color will be. You will need enough water though to make it dye evenly).

Turn the heat down to medium and mix every so often.

When the water turns clear-ish (after about 20 min­utes) and it looks like the play silk has sucked in all the color you can take it out and rinse it until the color stops run­ning. (Again, mine didn’t run at all)
Hang to Dry.
As you can see the green didn’t dye evenly, it took on a bit of a tie dye look. A lot of peo­ple pre­fer it that way since it looks pretty.
Me? I’m not really sure which look I like better…

The dye took on a tie dye approach because the silk was scrunched up when I put it in the pot. If you like it like that then use a smaller dish/pot. If you want it even then use a big­ger pot or add your play silk slowly mak­ing sure to get even coverage.

Method Three: Maybe this should be called method one and a half since the only dif­fer­ence is that I used a large cookie sheet…

Any­way,
Since I wanted the blue to be more even(after dye­ing it on the stove) I added one more packet of berry blue to a large cookie sheet, added some hot water(enough to cover the silk) and I placed the playsilk evenly in. (It was sort of flat like how you would fold a blanket).

It dyed beau­ti­fully and very even. The light spot in the pic above on the blue is the sun.
(I’m sure this can be done with­out using the stove like in Method One).

There are many dif­fer­ent ways this can be done. One of which is by using the microwave. I plan to try that in the future since I ordered A LOT of play silks and have many col­ors to try.

Have you made playsilks? I’d love to see so we can get ideas on col­ors

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