Did you know that you can dye your yarn using Wilton Icing Dyes?
You already know I’m a huge fan of dyeing with Kool Aid… but the colors can be a little limiting. So I had to try my hand with the Icing Dyes!
Advantages of Icing Dye
Icing dye, as the name suggests, is actually meant for dyeing. Granted, it’s usually food and not yarn… but it means that there are a wide range of colors that are really quite nice.
The dyes also have the property that you can mix them together with fairly predictable results, which isn’t necessarily true of Kool Aid.
The main disadvantage is that you’ll need to add vinegar to your dye bath to get the color to set. That’s not too big of a downside!
Wilton Icing Dye Color Card
For each color, my recipe was:
- 8 yards of white worsted weight yarn
- 1/8 tsp of Wilton Icing Dye
- 2 T vinegar
- 1/4 cup boiling water
And here’s how the colors look!
I’m so excited about the possibilities! These are the colors straight out of the jar… you can mix the colors to get even closer to what you want.
Notes on Dyeing
- These colors were all produced with the same strength of dye. Experiment with adding less dye for more subtle colors.
- Purple is notoriously difficult. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the blue & red tones separated out quite a bit. I love the look, but you’ll want to always test swatches if you want a certain look.
- A true black is very hard to achieve. I’ll play around with adding a higher intensity of dye.
- Always do a test swatch! These 8 yard skeins were just perfect, you can wind them yourself for playing!