Monday, March 3, 2014

Bleached cotton yarn!

I'm having too much fun with yarn this weekend! I did a second dye on the Kool-Aid wool yarn, and I got it JUST like I wanted!

But I also started some other coloring this night! I poured concentrated bleach into glass jars and dipped cotton yarn in them! The effect is AMAZING! Can't believe the results!

Ok, so lets start from the beginning! I just remembered that I saw someone pouring bleach over cotton skeins this last summer and used the yarn for dishcloths. The person had used black yarn and the bleaching made parts of it brown-ish, made for a really cool effect.

So I dug out some cotton skeins, first in three colors, but I ended up using four so excuse me for not including the purple in this picture...it was taken before that decision...and I've allready plumped some of the skeins in bleach allready...

 The yarn I'm using is Bomull Sport, which is my favorite cotton to use for dishcloths. 100% cotton. sturdy and purdy!

Ok, so I wanted to try and make the skeins half and half in color, so I needed some kind of glass or plastic vessel so they could stand up right into the bleach. The best ones I could find I could find, wich was the empty glass jars from my Diamon Candle candles, and I could just fit two skeins into each jar! Perfect!

I poured about 50/50 water and bleach into the jars at first, not too much since I knew the skeins would fill them up and I didn't want to have bleach spilling out over the bathroom sink cause I had put too much in there... But stupid me forgot that the yarn is COTTON! WATER ABSORBENT! Stupid me! So I had to pour more and more bleach and water into the jars cause the skeins kept sucking up all the liquids! But I was surprised to see immediant results! The skeins switched colors in front of my eyes and it was beautiful!

The dark green got a gradient of orange, yellow and white, the purple got a beautiful gradient to hot pink, light pink and white, the turquoise turned white and the red turned orange-ish and white! So much fun! I let them sit for about 30 minutes, I could have taken them out maybe 10-15 minutes earlier, I let them sit so long cause I was afraid the bleach wouldn't reach the center of the skeins before I took them out and rinsed them out... I am SO pleased with the result!

These will become four fancy dishcloths soon enough!

6 comments:

  1. Omg. LIZ. This is brilliant. And soooo coolll!! Can't wait to see how they knit up!!

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  2. So amazing! One question since I want to t it too. ^-^ How many times did you need to refill the water and bleach mix? Or did you just pour it until you were happy with the colors?

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    1. Not sure what to tell you... The yarn suck up the liquids pretty quick, so I poured on more so I knew it would sit in the mixture and also get soaked and actually bleach all the way through the skein...not just the outside or just the inside...understand? xD
      show me pictures if/when you do it! I wanna see your results! =D

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  3. I gave this a try, tonight, and sadly, I didn't get the results I was hoping for. I'm still happy with what I DID get - it just wasn't what I expected. =) I'll post pictures on dA once the yarn is dry.

    For the record, I used glass mason jars and Bernat Handicrafter cotton. I only managed to get white on one of the five skeins that I tried.

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