Slow Cooker Play Silks

Well, i'm doing it - testing my playsilk dying in the crockpot!! I started out this am with putting the new blanks from Dharma in the washer to make sure there was no fingerprints, oils, etc. I had 6 of the 35" square and 12 of the 11" square blanks. I'm testing with 2 of the 11" squares (since i have more to "spare"!)

So i washed (didn't dry them though - since i was just going to put them in more water!) and stuck them in the crockpot with some water and set it on HIGH.




So i let that heat up almost 1 hour. Just before the hour was up, i boiled some water and added some Wilton's red-red icing dye (a couple of "knife" tips full of dye) and mixed in a cup of boiling water . The added it to the pot



Waited another near hour and checked. It wasn't getting a nice deep red, so using the suggestions i've seen for wool yarn dying, i decided to use 2 cheery and 1 black cherry packet. 30 minutes later (so 90 minutes from original dye added), i toss in the kool-aid (pre-mixed with boiling water in a mug).




It's SOOOOO much darker! 15 minutes after adding the kool-aid, i added in 1/4 cup vinegar. I then set a timer for 1 hour past adding the vinegar to check how much of the dye was absorbed.

ok - all finished dying. Here it is after i rinsed it in the sink!



and an outside pic - shows it's true color better then the inside one



And FINISHED!
I love how the color came out - it is still really nice and RED, not pink and the color is uniform. But somehow there is a HUGE difference in size now on only 1 of the silks (2 inch difference from side to side, and up/down). Also, one of the seams in the large silk started coming undone... i believe from the dryer. Next time, i'll hang to dry.