An Easter Experiment - Tie-Dye!
Last year, I posted about dying play silks with Kool-Aid. Yesterday, I tried something a little different: I used our leftover Easter Egg dye to tie-dye an extra play silk I had laying around. The result, pictured here, delighted the children and turned out better than I could have expected since I haven’t tie-dyed anything since I was about 10!
So first, the recipe for the Egg Dye…It’s pretty easy–just 1/2 t. of vegetable food coloring (you know, the kind you color icing with!), 1 T white vinegar, and 3/4 c boiling water. The eggs turned out gorgeous if I m
ay say so myself–even the brown ones!
Anyhow, it seemed a shame to waste all that dye after only doing a baker’s dozen eggs, so I raided my craft stash and pulled out a 45″ square of un-dyed silk and soaked it in boiling water while we ate dinner.
After dinner, I poured a mix of the lighter shades (yellow, pink, & peach) over the silk, which I’d wrung out gently, in a microwave safe bowl, covered with cling film, and microwaved for 2 minutes to set the dye. After a quick cold-water rinse, I tied knots in the silk and also wrapped rubber bands around gathers of the silk (the “tie” in tie-dying). Then I poured the darker dies (purple, blue, & green) over the silk, covered it, and microwaved for two more minutes. I was careful not to stir the silk too much in the darker dye so that the lighter color of the first dying wouldn’t be totally covered by the darker ones.
Another quick rinse and half an hour to hang-dry, and the silk is dyed and ready for play time. Gabriel’s really in to Super Heroes and pirates at the moment, so the silks double as cape and pirate bandana!
In other news, after we stayed up a bit late watching the Illusionist (which I highly recommend!) last night, the children decided to wake up at 6am to find their Easter eggs and I’m pretty sure Lily had consumed half a bag of Sun Drops (read “natural” M&Ms) by 6:30. Great start to the morning. Oh, and it snowed and is 20 degrees outside, so we’ve been cooped up all morning.
We’re really hoping it warms up soon so we can get the kids and the pup outside, or we might all go stir crazy. Happy Easter/Solstice/Spring/whatever!!!
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Yeah….Easter was a lot more fun before it meant getting up at 6am to find eggs and then sugar-crazed children
Our Easter was over before 7am.
I hope it warms up too!
March 24th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
cool tie-dyed silk and beautiful eggs!
we’ve been going stir crazy here too. 
looks like we’ll be having nice weather this week again. yay!!!
March 25th, 2008 at 8:41 am
No doubt! Now if only the wind would die down a bit. We just got 70 yards of mulch delivered and have a lot of yard work to do!!!