Dyeing acrylic wool

How-to Questions
1

I’ve been bought lots of acrylic wool - which I’m intending to weave into a rug. I really want to dye the wool dark green (don’t mind if it dyes into different shades of dark green though). I’ve looked online & it seems a tricky process using “disperse dyes” - which if it works will give a light shade (so not what I want) or a complicated & potentially dangerous process with basic dyes.

Is there any other way to dye my 100% acrylic wool? As it will be turned into a rug it won’t be regularly washed like a garment but it will be placed on a cream carpet - so I don’t want the colour to stain the carpet beneath.

Has anyone had any success with using (opaque) fabric paints on acrylic wool & if so, can you please give me some tips???

Thanks in advance

2

Hi… waiting for any response - do I presume that no-one on this forum knows about dyeing acrylic wool or am I just being impatient?

3

There have been posts in the past about dying acrylic yarn and I don’t recall seeing that anyone has done it. I think that it’s a complicated process that few are willing to mess around with.

4

Hello, marinamamadoula, and welcome to KnittingHelp. Sorry it’s taken a week for any of us to reply to you.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never dyed any yarn before and I think a lot of people were waiting for someone with some experiance to answer you. (Myself included.)

I’ve had a quick look on the ‘Creating Yarn: Spinning, Dyeing etc’ Forum at some of the threads about Dyeing Acrylic and the general consensus seems to be that ‘it’s no job for a novice amateur’ due to the need for complex chemical mixtures. There appears to be two main camps of opinion between ‘leave it to the professionals’ and ‘if you’re an experienced home dyer, you could have a go, but be very careful’.

I don’t know if anyone had tried the fabric paints, but if the instuctions say they are OK for acrylics it may be worth trying a test piece.

Think aloud, if you get the yarn to take the dye, but can’t prevent it rubbing off on the cream carpet, would it be possible to attached a backing material to the rug?

Sorry, I can’t be less vague.

5

Welcome to KH!
I think the number of experienced dyers who are active users is fairly low. I can see a few past threads that aren’t too old that might help but I have no firsthand experience.
http://www.knittinghelp.com/forum/showthread.php?t=110124&highlight=dyeing+acrylic
http://www.knittinghelp.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111747&highlight=dyeing+acrylic

I assume you’ve tried Google but this site cautions against dyeing acrylic (difficulty and safety) while giving information and methods.
http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/how_to_dye_acrylic.shtml

6

I came across this how to dye acrylic yarn video and remembered this thread. I hope the OP has email notification or other way of knowing there’s a new post here. HTH