Acid Dyeing

Today I did some dyeing with Liz, and it was awesome. We each ended up dyeing two pounds of wool roving with acid dyes. Acid dyes are really easy to use, and pretty readily avaliable, so they are a really great dye to use, plus they are not very toxic at all! All you need is some vinegar, foil, and saran wrap, and you can dye any protein fiber. We first split our roving into one ounce sections, which made it easier to work with and will ultimately let the wool dry faster.

After the wool was split into one ounce sections, we folded them in half three times and then wrapped one of the free ends around the bundle to make a little bundle. Don't they just look like adorable little bows?
We then took the bundles and soaked them in a water-vinegar solution for about 15 minutes. I added enough vinegar to the water so that it smelled slightly like vinegar, but you don't need to be precise about this at all. The wool only needs to soak for 15 minutes, but I just left them in there until the big pot of water we had set up for steaming began to boil.
While the wool was soaking and the water was heating up, I mixed the acid dyes. Acid dyes can be mixed to any concentration, but 1/2 tsp. of dye per 8 oz of water gets a good medium concentration of color.
I used a funnel to get the dye into the bottles, and poured hot water down to mix it. As long as the water is hot enough to dissolve the dye, you don't need to worry about the funnel clogging or cleaning the funnel between dyes, the hot water will do that for you.

Me mixing the dye.

After the water is added to the dye, you want to shake the bottle to make sure its all dissolved. Once the dyes are mixed, let them cool until they are just barely warm. You don't want them too hot because it will felt the wool.

Next, we lined trays with saran wrap and placed a few bundles of soaked wool on them. The wool had the excess water squeezed out of them before being placed on the tray, but they were still damp. This is going to be where the dyeing takes place, and the tray makes for really easy clean up.
Then, we squirted the dye on to the wool, making sure to press the wool down in order to ensure that the color made it all the way through the bundle.Once the wool bundles were completely saturated, we wrapped them in the saran wrap, and then again in two layers of foil. They look like giant burritos! We put the wool burritos into our steamer and let them steam for 30 minutes. I probably should have rotated the burritos halfway though since the dye seemed to pool down on the bottom, leaving the wool at the bottom darker than the ones at the top.
Once the steaming was done, we took out the burritos and let them cool a bit. We then rinsed them out with warm water around the same temperature as the wool (again, to prevent felting). Once the water ran clear, we squeezed out the bundles and hung them up to dry.
And here are the fruits of our labors! Liz dyed the oranges and greens on the left, and I did the four on the right, ending at the insanely bright chartreuse color. That one didn't turn out so well... As usual, once the roving is dry I'll post some pictures!