Fiber Friday - Silk Dyeing

Holy cow - is it Friday already? I was in Silverdale all day yesterday teaching silk dyeing at the Quality Sewing store there. It was a lot of fun and reminded me why I have pursued this career - because it's very rewarding to help others to discover and enjoy ways to be creative with textiles and fiber arts.

It never ceases to amaze me how talented and creative my students are. I always demonstrate various ways they can crease, crumple, and otherwise creatively color their silk dyeing projects. But they always come up with something completely different that I hadn't thought of before. I just love seeing what they come up with.

The silk dyes I use are fairly unique - they are Colorhue 'instant set' silk dyes. They are an acid dye that is especially suitable for silk, although it can be used on other fibers as well. What I've found (and been taught) is that they will color other fibers but it may require a much longer immersion in solution in order to achieve the desired color saturation. I can't imagine teaching with anything else, as no other dye or paint I've found offers the ease of use of the Colorhue dye. Not only will it work with cold water, but I don't have to add any chemicals or heat to set the dyes. It's like dyeing Easter eggs - just dip and you're done! So it's perfect for my students. They can concentrate on playing with the color and thinking about design rather than worry about 'what step comes next'. To top it off, they're even non-toxic.

There are various brands and types of dyes used for dyeing silks. I prefer acid dyes for their relative ease of use and low toxicity. Procion fiber-reactive dyes will also work on silk, but they will 'strike' differently on silk than they will on cotton or rayon (cellulosic fibers). This can be used to great advantage, however, when dyeing blended fiber fabrics, such as burnout velvets and satins. It's difficult to say that any one dye is better than another - they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

You can even dye silk using food coloring. The wash and light-fastness will not be as great, but it's easy enough to do. Just add a generous amount of vinegar - acid - just as if you were dyeing Easter eggs. Kool-Aid and similar drink mixes (the unsweetened kind!) can also be used. In this case, citric acid is the acid used to create a simple acid dye.

Silk also over-dyes easily. Many dyes are relatively 'transparent', lending themselves to beautiful color combinations when layered. Here is a vest made from 'recycled' silk. It started out as a really awful shade of brown. It was such a nasty color that I wouldn't even use it for a lining. So I dunked it in green dye and it resulted in the lovely shade of olive green you see here. I then used stamps to stamp it in rough squared spirals with Lumiere metallic paint, and when I was done stamping, I diluted the Lumiere with water and flicked the remaining paint onto the fabric with a paintbrush. I was really lucky to find the 'Poppy Vest' by The Sewing Workshop. I had to cheat a bit here and there but did manage to scrape this asymmetrical vest out of that oddly shaped scrap of silk fabric. Now isn't that better than leaving it lying around unloved because of its icky color?

I heartily recommend you try silk dyeing sometime if you haven't already. If you can't find any classes, Things Japanese offers multimedia CD-ROM's that will take you step-by-step through the whole process. Have fun!