Roving wool (either dreaded or unfelted depending on prference - I prefer dreaded)
Clothes Horse
Washing Up Bowl
Jacquard Acid Dye
White Vinegar
Spoon
Large Saucepan
Kettle
My process starts with the dreads being felted. I prefer this as I find that the wool can sometimes start to felt together if you dye them before felting.
There are 50 medium length DE dreads that have been felted 4 times before I started the dying process:
You then take your washing up bowl and add enough hot water to cover all the dreads, then add half a cup full of white vinegar and stir before placing the dread in to soak.
They need to soak for at least half an hour to ensure they are all nicely wet and free from any oils that may stop the dye from penetrating.
Next choose your colours, for this full set I am making 25 brown to UV pink tips and 25 brown to UV green dreads. For this tutorial I am using the pink and brown. (interestingly enough, most of the dyes look a completely different shade to what they actually turn out, the green was more of a mustard shade but dyed the brightest green)
Put your hob on and boil your kettle, once boiled poor the water in to your pan and add a teaspoon of colour in as well
If it is your first time dying you may be a little alarmed that you have chosen the wrong colour, check using a tea spoon (as illistrated) or ensure you have a small chunk of excess wool to test to ensure the colour is not the wrong shade or is not too mellow or bright
Once the pan and water are sufficently warm, add a small cup of white vinegar in, this acts
as the fixer for the colour.
Then add the dreads in (if dying a large amount of dreads I would recommend doing half then half, I did 25 in a very large bowl and they just managed to fit)
Push the dreads down using a wooden spoon or mallett to ensure even coverage when dying, and leave the dread for about 15-20 minutes, stiring occassionally and keeping an eye on them.
You should then find that the water that was once bright pink, is now almost completely clear, this is because the wool has absorbed all the dye.
Remove the dreads from the bowl and drain all the excess water (careful though as they will be very hot)
Once all the water has drained off, you need to rinse them to ensure any excess colour is removed, once they have cooled down they should look something like this
And this is the dreads under UV light (please bare in mind the UV light I have a small money counter and the bulb is about the same size as my middle finger - if put under a proper UV light they would be much more vivid)
Apolgies for the rubbish picture there.
That is the end of this tutorial.. however I wanted transitional dreads.. so I need to replicate the process but in a slightly different method...
Soooooo, I leave the dreads to dry completely for two days and then I bunch the dreads together and tie them in the middle using an elastic band to hold them all sturdy.
You must then repeat the process of soaking the dreads (only the middle though not the whole dread) in the water and vinegar, and the step on adding the colour to the pan...
Then you place the dreads in to the pan
I like to get a good gradiant of transition of colour, in this case from brown to pink, so I spoon a small amount of colour and splash up thr dread slightly so that the colour stains the wool slightly but not as much as the wool that is fully submerged
Once the middles have been dyed for about 15 minutes, remove, wash off the excess dye and voila... your dreads should look like this...
I think that is everything, I hope my tutorial was easy to follow!!
