Silk Dyeing Advice

Silk is a bit more finicky than other animal fibers.  The following are tips that I learned on Ravelry and have combined here; they work.  My dye project was done with Jacquard dyes, citric acid, and the microwave method.  You will need rubber gloves for this one, as your hands will be in the dye pot a lot.

First, soak your skein in warm soapy water (with Orvus, Dawn, Synthrapol or other gentle grease-removing soap of your choice) for about a half hour.  Come back and rinse it until the soap is all removed.  (No worries about felting!)

Fill your dye pot with the appropriate amounts of citric acid, dye, and water.  My dye pot for this project was the Rachel Ray 4-quart stoneware pot (it's microwave-safe), approximately filled halfway with water, before adding the other items.  The color recipe used (for one skein of yarn) was 2tsp Fire Red, 1/2 tsp Brilliant Blue, and just a tiny dab of black (the amount that stuck to the tip of the dry spoon when I poked it into the dye jar).  I also used 2 tablespoons of citric acid.    Make sure to mix it all up well so there are no clumps of dye or acid crystals.

Put on your rubber gloves.  Put the skein into the pot.  Submerge it thoroughly.  Even though it was wet from the soap bath, it will still try to float at this point, so you'll need to really massage the liquid into the fibers in order to get the skein to sink down.  Don't yet worry about making sure the dye penetrates to the whole skein - at this point you just want to make sure the skein will stay submerged.  To help with this, I put the lid on the pot upside-down, so that the pot handle would poke the skein down under the level of the water.

Leave it alone for a day.  Yes, a full day.  I left mine alone for 20 hours.  Come back periodically and mush it down in further, and after it's all submerged on its own, you can start spreading the strands out to make sure the dye penetrates all the way to every part of the skein.

At the end of this long soak, put the pot in the microwave and nuke it for 15 minutes.  If you are using a thick stoneware pot like mine, this pot really holds heat well, and after the microwaving is done, just let the pot sit inside the microwave for several hours (until the outside of the pot is room temperature to the touch).  If you need the microwave, of course, you can put the pot elsewhere.  If you are not using a thick pot like this, you may need to microwave it again for 15 minutes (after the pot has cooled). 

When your pot is cool, lift out the skein and check the dye bath.  It should be nearly, if not entirely, exhausted (meaning the water should now be clear, and the yarn should have absorbed all the dye).  If not, don't worry too much.  Let the skein cool to room temperature and then rinse until the water runs clear.  To make sure the water really is running clear, put a stopper in the sink and fill it, with the skein in there.  As long as your sink is white, you will easily be able to see any tint in the water.

When the water runs clear, lift out the skein, squeeze it out as much as possible.  Roll it in a towel, really pressing down on it to get water out.  Hang it to dry.  It will take a few days to thoroughly dry.

If your yarn is crunchy when dry, don't worry - this is a feature of silk yarn.  Simply hold one end of the loop and whack the other end on the floor (like a whip) several times, moving your grip to a different part of the skein.  It will soften up nicely.