Kool-Aid Dyed Playsilks
This is something I posted a few months ago on an old blog. I didn’t want it to get lost and forgotten, so I’m putting it here for you to enjoy!
I love Waldorf-style toys, and I was very excited to find this tutorial on www.Make-Baby-Stuff.com about an inexpensive way to dye your own playsilks!
I ordered 6 plain white silks from here. I got 4 35×35 (at $3.75 each) and 2 30×30 (at $2.80 each!), thinking the smaller ones would be more manageable for my one-year-old, and my 3-year-old could use the larger ones for capes!
I prepared the vinegar soak as detailed here and put in all of the silks with a full tea kettle of hot water:
I first dyed red and green, because I only had two containers to work with.
The red dye was 2 packets of cherry Kool-Aid and one packet of Black Cherry Kool-Aid.
For the green dye, I had only 2 packets of some kind of lemon-lime Kool-Aid. MakeBabyStuff.com recommends 3, but I didn’t plan ahead that far…
After about 5 minutes I took the green silk out and rinsed it, followed by the rinsing of the red silk.
I didn’t plan ahead in my vinegar rationing either, and I noticed I would run out before I finished all 5 silks (I decided to leave one silk undyed, so it could be white “snow” for an igloo play set we have from Imagiplay).
To conserve vinegar, I saved the green dye water and added blue food coloring to it to dye the blue silk.
MakeBabyStuff.com recommends wearing gloves to prevent dye stains on the hands, but I didn’t have those either…
I “recycled” the red dye concoction by adding 3 packets or orange Kool-Aid to make our orange play silk.
I used the vinegar soak from step one of the tutorial for my yellow dye. I had 2 packets of Wyler’s lemonade, but it wasn’t as brilliant a yellow as I wanted, so I added a good splash of my favorite brand of yellow food coloring.
It is called Best Odour Brand, made in Thailand! I just like the name! They make extracts, too!
When the silks were hung to dry, I was so excited I wanted to wake my preschooler from his nap to come see them! I refrained, because I am trying to save these until Christmas!
But I did give him the white one to play with, which made a great “snow” surface for the Arctic Playset!
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07 March 2009, 5:56 pm
These would even look lovely around the house.
Jennifers last blog post..The Hits Keep Coming
07 March 2009, 11:07 pm
That is absolutely so cool! And the color will stay put through washings too? That is absolutely something I would have done when my kids were little.
08 March 2009, 11:36 pm
I love this post, and am so glad that these turned out for you. I want to do this in the summer, when I make a mess in the yard and hang them out to dry.
Kathleens last blog post..Weekend Contest Love: 3/8
18 March 2009, 8:27 am
[...] Most Travelled gives a tutorial on how to make colourful play silks for the kids - just swap food colouring for Kool Aid and it’s a [...]
20 March 2009, 7:36 am
[...] I got excited about dyeing our own play silks, some people asked, “What do you do with [...]