Hello, after a week without posting I have decided to come back with everything and returning to the section on alternative uses of coffee, today more specifically we will be dyeing a bun of cotton thread, thread that I will in turn be using for a post in the sister community of #needleworkmonday and thus show that the result is usable 😊
I have to tell the truth, and I couldn't find the shade of brown yarn that I needed for my project, so I decided to buy two balls of yarn from the cheapest ones I could find and start experimenting. At the moment I am only going to dye one and to do so, first I am going to place it stretched out in a container so that the coffee can better penetrate the cotton. Will it work? 🤔
As I always say, the coffee for these experiments should be the cheapest possible, since it is usually the darkest and logically it will hurt less to spend it. In my case 4 tablespoons were enough, I simply strained it and even when it was hot I placed it in the container with the thread, we will leave it there for a couple of hours
In the end I added a little good quality coffee to the container, not so much because of the dyeing, but because of the smell, a spoonful of good coffee in the still hot water was enough to aromatize the entire thread 😊
Here there is not much science or something very complex to explain, what we see is that the cotton absorbs the coffee and little by little it darkens more and more due to its oxidation. The trick is to let it cool without removing the thread, so that the natural oils of the coffee remain inside the thread and thus make it much more difficult for it to come out when washing it.
I cheated a bit and used a hair dryer to dry it faster. At first I was a little depressed because the dark shiny color was the one I got in stores, but then it got a bit duller and it's just what I needed 😊
So it is something to keep in mind, the color becomes lighter as the thread dries.
The mistake that I had not foreseen was that when stretching the thread to place it in the container, knots were made... so I had to spend 30 minutes untangling the thread and thus be able to wrap it on a stick for later use.
It should be noted that at this point, it was really dry, I 100% recommend the hair dryer 😊
And we would have it ready, basically it can be used and in fact, I am doing it. I came to the house of one of my aunts so that she could teach me to knit with two needles, the funny thing is that she doesn't know about it either, although watching tutorials on Youtube, we managed it there 😂
Actually, I would like to say that tomorrow I will upload the finished project, but I can't guarantee it, I will only tell you that it is something very nice and special, so stay tuned for my next publication 😊
