Dyeing Advice

Youtube

We have some youtube tutorials to help you get started with dyeing your yarn, please see our youtube channel here

Dye Suppliers

These are our favourite dye suppliers:

Kemtex dyes (UK)

Siobhans Crafts - (UK)

Colour Craft (UK)

Dharma Trading (USA)

Prochem dyes (USA)

dYEING FOR THE FIRST TIME? hERE ARE A FEW TIPS.

If you are purchasing yarn for the first time to dye, here are a few tips:

  1. We recommend you choose a superwash yarn for dyeing, we label the yarns as being superwash on the description, this process stops the yarn from felting. If you are a beginner choosing a superwash yarn allows you more freedom to get it wrong. It also takes the colour quicker than non superwash.

  2. Take a look at our health and safety video on YouTube, its good to get into good habits from the beginning, dyeing involves using powders and acids and good practices should be adhered to.

  3. When you are starting out, buying pans and equipment from charity shops is a low cost way of funding your dyeing habit, you then don’t have to invest lots of money into equipment. Dyeing really only needs very simple equipment and you can get creative with containers and jars to help with this.

  4. If you are dyeing wool, alpaca, silk (basically any animal fibre) these fibres are made of protein, therefore you will need to use acid dyes. These require acid in the form of citric acid or vinegar to fix them, you will also need a source of heat, which can be a microwave, steamer, oven or pot with water on a hob.

  5. If you are dyeing cotton, linen or bamboo (basically any plant fibre) these fibres are made of cellulose, therefore you will need procion or fibre reactive dyes, soda ash and Urea. No heat is required with this method, although rinsing out excess dye requires quite a lot of water.

  6. Wear gloves and an apron and old clothes. Dyeing is messy, dye no matter how careful you are will go on your clothes, your hands and in the area you are dyeing, so cover surfaces and wear the appropriate clothing. Secondly dye particles do get everywhere, so don’t use kitchen equipment that you use for cooking, and we always recommend dyeing outside at the beginning, then you can slosh about without worrying.