So many people around the office have jumped into dyeing this month as members of our Dye-Along, which makes me so glad! Dyeing is one of the most relaxing, creative, and fun hobbies I have, and I love that we're all sharing the cool tricks and ideas we're discovering. Knit Picks offers a variety of natural-colored yarn bases that are perfect for dyeing; the creamy colored wool takes all kinds of dyes wonderfully and gives you, the dyer, amazing control over the range and depth of colors in your finished yarn.
I love dyeing natural colored yarns, too. But sometimes, I just have to shake things up.
This is my latest finished sweater project. It started out as 500 grams of royal blue 4-ply worsted wool that I bought at a mill end sale, and it looked like this:
I was initially attracted to this yarn because I love deep, saturated colors. I saw it paired with a light grey or beige in a vaguely nautically striped garment. But as the months (ok, ok, years) passed, I fell out of love with it, and lost my inspiration. Typically, this is a circumstance in which I would de-stash, or sell the yarn off to a knitter who was excited to work with it, but I had just caught the dyeing bug, and I wondered if maybe I couldn't transform it into something I loved again.
I wound all the yarn into a long hank and tied it in several places with figure-8 ties to keep it from getting tangled. I filled up my giant dyepot (actually an ancient enamel stockpot from the goodwill!) with water and one single jar of WIlton's icing dye in Violet.
I dissolved the dye and added only a small bit of vingar, because I wanted the dye to take up slowly. The more vinegar you add, the faster the dye will strike (generally--there are some exceptions but that is for another post!) and since I wanted a somewhat even amount of variation in my yarn, I added the vinegar later, to set the dye once it had been pretty evenly absorbed.
I ended up with about 1100 yards of semisolid, deep purply-blue wool, enough for a whole sweater! And that's exactly what I did with it!
I used Ysolda Teague's Vine Yoke pattern, with some modifications to make wrist-length sleeves and to fit the body to my long torso. The pattern runs a bit large so I knit a size smaller than I usually wear and was glad I did. And finally, this piece is knit sideways, and was the first sideways sweater I've ever knitted. There are many points in the pattern where stitches are placed on a holder to be worked later, many provisional cast ons, and grafting. I would never have gotten through all of it without Options needles--I used the cables with endcaps as stitch holders, so I could add on a needle tip when I was ready to work them again, and I used a cable as the waste yarn in my provisional cast on (Iike the "open" cast on, which is the first one described in the article), so when it was time to work those stitches, I already had them arranged on a cable.
And of course, I loved every minute of working with this beautiful yarn! Ultimately, I could prbably have acheived a color like this by dyeing a bare yarn, but it would have taken a lot more time and attention on my part. I recently dyed up another sweater's worth of yarn (which I'll be sharing with you soon!) and believe me, it was a looong process before I got something I was happy with. Overdyeing turned out to be a really fast and easy way to get a color I was thrilled with! If you want to try it yourself, I suggest using a dye that is in a color family close to that of your base yarn, so you won't have extremely jarring effect, just a subtle variation. I think that blue dye over a green yarn would be lovely, or red dye over and orange, or purple over a red, etc.
And..a couple more gratuitous sweater shots becuase I am just so in love with it!! And let's all give Alison a special thanks, she took these gorgeous pictures.
Apr 23, 2011 at 9:21 AM I am about to take on my first dyeing project. The information you have given here has really inspired me to look at my own stash and see what the possibilities are!
May 28, 2010 at 11:49 PM Thanks, Nina. I'm now ready to dive in ( to the process, not the pot). ?E.
May 28, 2010 at 1:18 PM Hi Evelyn, I didn't steam when I overdyed this. I put the pot with the dye and fiber directly on the stove and heated just below a simmer (so there's no movement in the water) until the water was clear. That should be enough to set the dye--no further steaming should be needed.
May 28, 2010 at 10:05 AM Nina, when you use the Wilton's dye do you stll have to put the yarn in a steam bath? I have some to over dye my yellow yarn and need to know what to do after the stock pot dyeing. ? E.
May 27, 2010 at 9:48 AM Hi Debbie! Is it light purple or dark purple? With light purple, you'll have more options. With Dark purple, you are more limited because lighter colored dyes might not show up as strongly as you would like. It also depends on what color you would like to have the yarn turn out. Basically, overdyeing with red or blue will make the purple warmer or cooler but still purple, black will darken the purple and (depending on the dye you use) may add some interesting variegation, Orange will create a warm brown, yellow a truer brown, and green a cool brown. Does that make sense? A great way to experiment with overdyeing is to cut a few 1-yard length of yarn, mix up very small amounts of dyestock in different colors (I'll put them in coffee cups or juice glasses when I do this), and dye the clippings in the microwave, each one in a different dye mix. You'll get a much clearer idea of what effects the different colors will have on the whole skein and then can dye the whole skein with less worry over messing it up. Hope this helps!!!
May 27, 2010 at 9:35 AM I have never dyed before and am very interested. I won a large hank of yarn and I hate the color and after reading this post I think overdying may be the answer. If the hank is mostly purple what colors can I use for the overdye? Thank you for this very informative post.
May 20, 2010 at 11:54 AM Thanks for the compliments, everyone! I am really happy with this project and am glad i could share it with you! Susan--I think dark red over gold would be beautiful--I'd anticipate getting a semi-solid rust or brick red color. I bet it will be beautiful!
May 20, 2010 at 10:48 AM That is AWESOME!! All of it! I was given some yellow wool (worsted 100 Gms.) and I plan to felt it, however, I don't really like the color. Now I realize it doesn't have to remain that color thanks to you. ? E.
May 20, 2010 at 9:58 AM I love overdyeing. You can get awesome dimensions and layers of colors instead of a single flat color. Beautiful dye job and sweater, Nina.
May 20, 2010 at 4:26 AM Nina, That is abolutely beautiful! I am in love with that color! Great job, on both the dye over and the sweater.
May 19, 2010 at 6:51 PM OK, I've got to ask... If I dye something in a golden tone, and over dye with a dark red... how so you think that will turn out?
May 19, 2010 at 6:19 PM Ooo... you are giving me such great ideas! Thanks so, so much. I'm getting ready to do my BIG experiment on Friday... after a sample tomorrow... or soon anyway. Life keeps getting in the way! LOL
May 19, 2010 at 2:32 PM Love the subtle color variations. It turned out beautifully!
May 19, 2010 at 2:30 PM Awesome sweater--georgeous pattern, beautifully done, and that overdyeing produced such intense effects of depth--congratulations!!