Last year for Christmas I made a LOT of felted wool Christmas trees out of upcycled and washing machine felted wool sweaters (check out my tutorial on how to felt wool sweaters if you don’t already know). I was sort of mindlessly cutting and stacking my felted wool Christmas trees while watching a movie, and I didn’t notice, until I’d already completely finished them, that six or seven of the trees had become a little heavy on the pink. Yikes! I wasn’t happy with my pink Christmas trees, but by that time it was too close to Christmas to bother fretting over them. Instead, I just stuck them in storage and crafted something else for those six cousins and family friends. The weather has turned here, however, and as I dug through my bins of autumn clothing last week, I happened upon those pink wool Christmas trees. Fortunately, since then I’ve had several months’ worth of playing with acid dyes under my belt, and so within the hour I had brand-new (to me) green-tinted felted wool Christmas trees drying next to the sink. I’m apparently getting my Christmas crafting done early this year! If you have a wool piece, whether it’s a finished product or an unfelted sweater that you’re ready to upcycle into something new, with a color that doesn’t appeal to you, it’s simple to overdye that wool to create a new color. Here’s how: First, choose your dye method. If you’re familiar with my tutorial on Kool-aid dyeing and my review of professional acid dyes, then you’re all set–if not, just pick one. They’re not hard! While I use one best method when I dye play silks, for instance, because I want perfect and consistent results, overdyeing a fabric that’s already been dyed is an artform that you can play with. For instance, I made several concessions from my usual strict dye routine:
I mixed up my dye bath as if I was dyeing one pound of fabric, and re-used that same dye bath until it was exhausted (when the color’s gone from the water, you’ll know that your dye is exhausted). I heated the water to boiling to help the dye saturate into the bath, then lowered the temperature to merely warm so that I could manipulate my felted wool trees in the dye bath with my bare hands (yes, they’re green today!). I did not pre-soak my trees. I just need a new tint, not a fully saturated new color, so I didn’t bother with the full prep of the fabric to be dyed. I did not dye my trees for the recommended time period. Instead of soaking them for half an hour, I soaked them for perhaps a minute. Overdyed fabric, especially if it was originally a dark color, can get much darker very quickly, something that I did not want.
Next » If you’re overdyeing a finished piece, as I am, then be especially mindful that you don’t felt it even more with water that’s too hot or warp it under its own weight as it become saturated with liquid. I laid my felted wool Christmas trees nicely in the colander attachment to my dye pot to dye them, turned them carefully by hand, and set them back up straight to drain. Notice that these dyed trees are still pretty dark–that’s because they’re wet. They’ll lighten up considerably once I’ve rinsed them and they’ve air-dried. Next » If your finished piece isn’t meant to be washable, then it isn’t necessary to wash it after you’ve finished overdyeing it. I rinsed each felted wool tree well, then let it air-dry. Next » Notice that my trees still aren’t a perfect, uniform green, but that wasn’t the result that I was after. When you overdye a piece, you’re never certain exactly what color you’ll come up with in the end. But with careful forethought and a judicious hand in the dye pot, you can absolutely use overdyeing to mask an offensive color and turn it into something far more appealing to your eye.
