How To Dye Your Yarn
With Kool-Aid, McCormick, Wilton and AmeriColor Food Colors

You don't need to be DaVinci or a Rocket Scientist to dye wool yarn in yummy, vibrant, custom colors - with inexpensive products that are safe enough to eat.

If you can follow the directions on a cake box....you can dye wool yarn. Using ingredients found in the baking section of large grocery stores (plus white vinegar, which is a few aisles over).

Soon, no orphaned skein in the LYS, no scrap in the stash, no wool (cashmere or other animal fiber) sweater in the thrift store will be safe.

(Food color won't dye acrylic yarn. Food color won't dye cotton permanently).

Newbie to food color dyeing?

More than a dozen pages on how food color works, hand paint and immersion dyeing, creating pastel colors, thrifty vinegar tricks, the mysteries of red food color, choosing a black, dyeing wool/nylon blends and more!

We have videos!

Watch self-striping, Kool-Aid color formulas, hand paint and immersion, dyeing skeins that harmonize, and breaking black videos.

Each video has its own page of instructions and hints.

We love cake decorators and
Birthday Parties

Why? Because all of the new kinds of food color and powdered drink mixes! Check-out our pages about AmeriColor, Kool-Aid, McCormick, Wilton, Klass and Easter Egg Dye.

So... now you need some yarn.

Over a dozen (and ever expanding) pages of base yarn with photos so you can see how they dye up. 100% wool, blends and superwash.

Make the perfect color.

Pages for blue and green and purple. Pages for Kool-Aid, McCormick, and Wilton. Fashion Color formulas, too. How to mix just the color you desire.

How about Ugly Yarn?

Don't toss it in the closet and forget it! Overdye that yarn into something you'll love. Works for recycled yarn, too. Bunches of pre-colored yarn turned into hundreds of other colors.

Why Should You Dye With Food Colors?

• Buy one hank, make dozens of colored mini-hanks.
• Put all your favorite colors on one hank.
• Turn closeout yarn into your favorite shades.
• Score sweaters at the thrift store, frog and dye.
• Food Color is non-toxic and easy to handle.
• So simple a kid can do it (so make sure you buy an extra hank of yarn for your helpers).
• It's so much fun, you may forget to knit or crochet... oooppps, did I say that out loud?
  

Can't Find the Page You Want?

Go to the top right of the page and enter a word in the box "Google Custom". Click the magnifying glass icon in the gray box.

You'll get a list of DyeYourYarn pages with that word.

Dye your yarn, floss, roving and fleece. Sign up for our newsletter and hear about our new pages.

New Pages

• Our Blog - experiments, hints and news.
  
• Breaking Violet, Purple, Delphinium and more!
  
• My top 10 favorite food colors.
  
• Recycling sweater arms into Knitting Blanks.
  
• Dye your own Camo colored yarn.
  
• Four different dyeing techniques on wool wrapped nylon. See how over-dyeing, hand-painting, gradient and dip dyeing change the look of one brand of yarn.
• Solar Dyeing in a jar.
  
• Problems with tangled yarn? Here's hints to control your hanks.
• Do you needle or wet felt? Dye your own fleece, in all the colors you need.