I love to knit and planning out the perfect yarn for each project. This year, in addition to all the knitting projects I had planned, I wanted to experiment with hand-dyeing my own yarn. I did a lot of research and tested a few different ways of how to dye yarn with acid dyes. Keep reading to see how I hand dyed my yarn and some tips I wish I knew before I started.
Dyeing yarn with acid dye is really fun and not as intimidating as you might think. The “acid” part of acid dyeing is actually citric acid, which you may already have at home from making your own bath bombs. There are multiple techniques you can use to actually dye the yarn depending on the results you want to achieve, but the materials used are basically the same:
Materials Used to Acid Dye Yarn
- dye pan + lid
- heat source
- respirator mask
- digital scale
- gloves
- citric acid
- removable zip ties
- syringes/squeeze bottles
- glass storage jars
You may already have some of these materials at home, but keep in mind that any equipment used in dyeing is no longer food safe. So make sure that anything you borrow from the kitchen is now only for dyeing yarn.
Prep Your Yarn and Dye Stock
As I mentioned, there are a few different ways you can acid dye your yarn, but they all start with pre-soaking your yarn and preparing a dye stock.
Pre-Soak Yarn
Acid dyes will only work with certain fibers. I ordered a bundle of eight sock yarns so I could see which bases I liked best, but any bare wool yarn will work. If you already know the base you like and you plan on dyeing a lot, you can get a discount on a 20-skein pack.
To get your yarn ready for the pre-soak, remove the label sleeve. Your yarn should have little ties that help keep it from getting tangled; open the yarn so it’s in a big loop. Add a removable zip tie to one end of the yarn loop. This will help keep the yarn tangle-free and act as a handle to help when soaking and dyeing the yarn.
Fill your wash tub with 1tbsp citric acid and enough room temperature water to fully submerge your bare yarn. Like I mentioned, the citric acid is the “acid” part of acid dyeing yarn; it allows the yarn absorb the dye. Stir the water until the citric acid has dissolved, and add the bare yarn. Submerge the yarn and gently press out any air bubbles, but be careful not to agitate the yarn too much or to tangle it. Leave the yarn to soak for 30 minutes.
Prepare a Dye Stock
While the yarn is soaking, you can prepare the dye stocks. The acid dyes are in a fine powder form so be sure to wear a respirator mask while working with them to prevent breathing it in; safety first!
Prepare your work area by covering any surfaces you want to protect; I dyed my yarn outside on the balcony. Gather your dye stock container, scale, silicone spoons, acid dyes, and some warm water to prepare your dye stocks. Wear gloves when handling the acid dyes to prevent any staining on your hands.
Start out by setting your acid dye jar on the scale and tare it. Then use the spoon to scoop out 1 gram of acid dye powder and place in into the glass dye stock container. Using a spoon to scoop the dye helps keep the dye powder from billowing into the air, and allows you to monitor the scale easier.
Add 100 ml of water to the container and mix with the spoon until the dye is dissolved. This is a 1% dye stock solution. Repeat this process for each color of dye stock you want. I like these storage jars because they each had a different color lid which I coordinated to the dye stock inside, and they have the ml markings on the side for easy measuring.
Mixing Colors + Diluting Dye
The dye stock solution is like the dye’s true color; it’s very pigmented and concentrated. I ordered six acid dyes and just mixed different dye stocks to create new colors.
If I wanted a brighter green, I’d take a new container and mix my emerald with gold ochre. To make a color less saturated, add water to dilute the dye. TIP: use a color wheel to help you see which colors to mix to create a new shade.
If you want to replicate a certain color, measure everything and write down the dye recipe you created. Dyes in a container can appear darker, so test a drop on a paper towel to see the color, and label your jars to keep everything organized.
How To Dye Yarn with Acid Dyes
Once the yarn is pre-soaked and the dye stocks are made, it’s time to dye your yarn. There are many ways to hand dye yarn depending on what you want to achieve. I love multi-colored yarns and speckles so that’s what I created! Here are some of the techniques I used to hand-dye my yarn:
Multi-Color Dye Bath
My dyeing area is small so I bought a small dye pan and it can only hold one skein of yarn. Fill your dye pan with 1/2″ – 1″ water and mix in 1 tbsp citric acid. Add yarn, and turn the heat on low to bring to a simmer. As the pan starts to heat up, you can add your dyes directly to the yarn.
I used a syringe to apply the 1% dye stocks to the yarn, and the color was super saturated.
TIP: a 1% solution may not show all the depth and variation of the colors. Even a slightly diluted color can give more range to a color.
If you prefer a less saturated color / more pastel, dilute the dye stock with water in a separate container until you get the color you want. I used a syringe to transfer some dye stock to a squeeze bottle and then added water to get a diluted color. Then I applied the new diluted dye to the yarn for less saturated colors.
TIP: Diluted colors will still appear deeper/more saturated while wet.
The syringe and squeeze bottle will give you a lot of control with where you apply the dyes and how much you use. I liked to use the nozzle to kind of inject the color in between and underneath, without having to move the yarn much. Try to avoid mixing/stirring the yarn or agitating it too much — water, heat, and agitation can make your yarn susceptible to felting .
Once you are happy with the color on your yarn, cover the pan with the lid and leave to simmer for 20 – 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, the dye should be fully absorbed. Use a spoon to see if there is any dye left in the water. It’s ok if there is some dye still in the pan, but just be aware that that left over dye may spread in the water when you flip the yarn over. Use the removable zip tie and/or the tongs to help you flip the yarn over and apply dye to the underside.
Apply the same color dye to the underside as you did on the top side. You may not need as much dye if some of the color already transferred down. Cover and let the water simmer for another 30 minutes.
Speckles
Speckled yarn has fun little pops of color in random areas. You can apply the speckles in a way that dyes the yarn, or as a crisp accent to already dyed yarn — or both; there are no rules. I applied speckles as an accent after I finished dyeing my yarn.
After letting the yarn simmer in the dye bath for 30 minutes on each side, I used the syringe to remove a lot of the water. I wanted the water to be really shallow so that the acid dye powder wouldn’t spread.
Once the water is really low ~1/8″ – 1/4″, use the enamel strainer to scoop out a tiny bit of the acid dye powder (make sure you wear your respirator). Then gently tap the strainer to sift out tiny flecks of the dye powder onto the yarn.
TIP: Go slowly; it may take a little bit for the speckles to react with the moisture in the yarn and appear. You can always add more, but you can’t take any away.
Once the speckles are how you want them, cover the pan and let the steam set the dye for ~20 minutes. Flip the yarn and repeat for speckles on the underside.
Hand Painting
Hand painting your yarn gives you ultimate control over where you apply your dye. With hand painting, you lay out a few long pieces of cling film and overlap them so no dye can escape.
Lay out your pre-soaked yarn loop onto the cling film and then use a syringe or squeeze bottle to apply the dye how you want. I like to use the back of a spoon to press the dye around and let neighboring colors blend. This dye method is nice because you can see exactly where the dye is going and you don’t have to worry about the colors traveling in the water or getting too muddy.
Once the color is how you want, you can flip the yarn over and apply more dye if necessary. Use the cling film to wrap and cover the yarn, and then roll it into a cinnamon roll shape.
Insert the grate insert into your dyeing pan with a shallow pool of water. The citric acid was already in the pre-soak, so it’s not necessary to add any more to the yarn or water. Once the water is steaming, place your yarn cinnamon roll onto the grate, and let it steam set for 30 minutes. Then flip the yarn over and simmer for another 30 minutes.
Cooling + Rinsing + Drying Your Yarn
However you choose to dye your yarn, you’ll need to cool, rinse, and dry it before you can skein it or cake it to knit with.
Cool Completely
Once your dye is set and your yarn looks how you want it, turn off the heat and leave your yarn to cool completely to room temperature in the pan. Any drastic shifts in temperature — like moving hot yarn to cool water — can felt the yarn.
I sometimes transfer the hot yarn and the warm, clean dye water into the wash tub so that it can cool in there, and I can immediately reuse the dye pan for the next skein I want to dye.
Rinse Until Clear
When your yarn is completely cooled, you can wash and rinse it to get out any dye that didn’t set. I move the wash tub with the cooled yarn to the sink and run one pump of wool wash into the room temperature water. Gently agitate the yarn and press it to get any extra dye out. Rinse, and repeat as necessary until water runs clear.
Leave Yarn to Dry
Use a salad spinner to get any excess water out of the yarn without wringing it. Set the yarn out to dry on a drying rack in a warm laundry room or outside in the sun. I leave my yarn on a drying rack outside during the day and bring it in overnight, and it’s dry the next morning.
Skeining + Re-Skeining
I wanted to try to dye a gradient/fade of color. I measured out ten 20 gram mini from two skeins of Felici and bound each with a removable zip tie.
After dyeing and drying, I realized that the minis were too small to twist into a skein. I used my yarn swift to re-wind the yarn into a larger loop.
The change in circumference broke up the pooling of my dye, which kind of blended the colors. Re-skeining my minis gave them these really cool stripes which I think helps my fade blend nicely. This could be a good technique if you want your skein of yarn to look more blended.
Final Thoughts
I hope you found this post helpful. Dyeing yarn is less intimidating than you might think. If you’re interested in dyeing your own yarn, I definitely recommend giving it a try.
I had so much fun experimenting with different colors and dyeing my own yarn, and I’m so excited to use it in a project. Dyeing yarn is like it’s own hobby. This was my first time dyeing anything, and I’m super happy with my results. I recently ordered a few more bare skeins and will continue to experiment dyeing yarn with acid dye.
I shared my progress along the way in my newsletter, and I definitely see improvements in technique from dyeing my first skeins. So, give it a try if you are interested. It’s a lot of fun to create your own colorways, and also to be able to use your creation to knit a new project.
