All dyed with food coloring in preparation for Autumn Scrap Blanket, 5mL per 100 yards approximately. I have about 100 scraps to overdye, which isn’t even the time consuming part: It’s logging all the parts on Ravelry and waiting for it to dry to reveal the yarn’s actual color.

Retrospectively my notes really suck. I used my test dye triangle as ratio reference when I needed an approximate color. I did the test with LorAnn yellow and blue dye, and Amazon red, which are dye pure, but expensive for the volume I needed, so broke down and bought 16oz bottles of McCormick food coloring. I never got into the McCormick red, but addition of Red40 to my McCormick yellow may have made my greens just a smidge more olive.

Whenever I could, I reused the dye bath, to save on Citric Acid (aka True Lime) and time heating more water. I eventually found “less is more” and preferred to add half or even a quarter of the food coloring volume (per dry weight) and add more if needed, removing any hanks that I already liked the color of.

If the yarn is dry before going in the dye water, the result is much less solid, but the yarn fights hard to stay dry. Also, adding more dye on top of the yarn and/or lighter colors result in less solid colors.

Don’t worry about your towels during, food coloring really doesn’t dye cotton at all.