Kid Friendly Dyeing - Making your own Play Silks

I have wanted to make some play silks for the girls for a long time.  Play silks can be used in a multitude of ways in creative play to stimulate a child's imagination. They can be used as blankets, for dress up, for doll play, in dance, flags & forts etc If you don't have time to make your own silks and just want to buy them these websites will help you Sarah's Silks or Magic Cabin.

I wanted to be able to make the silks in fastest possible way which was kid friendly and non toxic. I googled about Kool Aid dying, winged it with the Easter Egg Dye and used the information here to experiment with tissue paper.

To see if these dying methods would succeed or fail I also made a sample without the kids using Tulip fabric dye. Here are the results.

Kool-Aid (powder) (Tropical Punch - Dye Red 40)
- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture.
- Mixture: We used 2 package of unsweetened Kool-Aid with 12 ounces of hot tap water + 4 ounces of vinegar.
- Squeeze water out of silk and place silk in a pyrex bowl with the kool aid mixture.
- Microwave for 2 mins - stir and let sit for 2 mins - do this step twice.
- Rinse in cold wash (no detergent) & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.
Comments: There was some mottling on the fabric - perhaps this is just a product of microwave dying but I suspect if we had used 3 packets of Kool-Aid with 18 ounces of hot tap water + 6 ounces of vinegar so the silk was submerged at all times - this might have yielded better results.

Kool-Aid (Liquid) (Tropical Punch - Dye Red 40)
- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture.
- Mixture: We used 1 liquid Kool-Aid with 12 ounces of hot tap water + 4 ounces of vinegar.
- Squeeze water out of silk and place silk in a pyrex bowl with the kool aid mixture.
- Microwave for 2 mins - stir and let sit for 2 mins - do this step twice. - Rinse in cold wash & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.
Comments: My girls really enjoyed squirting in the liquid. The mess was much more contained than with the powder sachets. The sugar in the liquid did not seem to affect the success of the dying - although the color is lighter. Some mottling - again I think we should have used more liquid.

Easter Egg Dye (McCormicks Assorted Food Colors & Egg Dye - Red 40)
- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture.
- Mixture: We used about all I had left in the bottle (maybe 1/2 to 3/4) with 12 ounces of hot tap water + 4 ounces of vinegar.
- Squeeze water out of silk and place silk in a pyrex bowl with the mixture.
- Microwave for 2 mins - stir and let sit for 2 mins - do this step twice. - Rinse in cold wash & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.
Comments: SO excited by the bright and even color - I tried this process without heating the liquid in the microwave because I wanted to find the most kid friendly process to dying these silks and IT WORKS!!! Here is my amended recipe:

Food Coloring or Paste/Gel.
- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture.
- Mixture: 1/2 bottle of 0.25oz food coloring with 16 ounces of hot tap water + 6 ounces of vinegar.
- Squeeze water out of silk and place silk in a pyrex bowl with the mixture.
- Leave it there and stir occasionally - you will see when the dye has been absorbed as the liquid will become a lot clearer - approx 20 mins.
- Rinse in cold wash & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.

Here is my pink, purple (a disaster - totally my fault), blue, yellow & green using this method.

Comments: I did notice the water did still not run clear in the washing machine after the rinse cycle. So perhaps the microwave method does produce a more colorfast product. However for ease, safety etc for dying with the kids this still by far is my favorite. Different types of food dyes did produce different results with mottling, color flecks etc.

Tissue Paper (7 sheets of red tissue paper)
- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture.
- Lay out some glad wrap or cling film and put sheets of tissue paper 2 layers thick on top of some glad wrap or cling film - 2 layers thick. Lay your wet silk on top as flat as possible.
- Lay more sheets of tissue paper on top of your silk. We used a total of 7 sheets of tissue paper - 2 layers underneath 1layer on top.
- Sprinkle some of your water & vinegar solution on top of the tissue layers & silk.

- Fold the tissue layers in half, in half again and in half again. Squeeze and massage all the layers together for some time. (My little one enjoyed dancing on top of the package instead!)

- Leave for several hours - we left ours over night. 
- Undo your package, peel off the tissue paper.
- Rinse in cold wash & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.

Comments: I liked this a lot - for the fact that it is totally kid safe, the most interactive, tactile, no hot water or microwave is needed. However the process did take the longest. The pattern where the fabric didn't touch the tissue paper looks kind of cool. I think you could make some really interesting designs/drawings with the tissue paper too. Maybe we will try that next.  

Tulip Liquid Dye (Red)

Comments: The most disappointing result by far - mainly because of the color - it is not red - I think it is orange. Granted I didn't fully follow the instructions on the packet - they didn't have instructions for use on such a small amount of liquid/material. I'll be returning the other dyes we purchased and have not used in this line. 

Further Notes: After all the silks were dry I used a hot iron on each silk. I used a front loading Electrolux Washing Machine which has a 20 minute cold rinse cycle without a spin. I used a front loading Electrolux Tumble Dyer that has a 14min 'fast dry' cycle which is at its 'sanitize' heat level (hotter that a hot cycle.) I purchased our plain silks from Dharma Trading they are 35"x35".


I hope this helps you make your own play silks at home too.