Kool-Aid, Red Quills

So I have been messing around with dying materials recently and thought I would pass some info along to others. There have been some good red quill hatch's this year, and enjoying attractor patterns I thought I would dye some super reddish quills. I am by no means an expert at this, but anyone can do it. It just takes some practice to dial it in, play around with these directions and have fun. Make sure you use a glass container for this. If you use plastic it will absorb the dye.

Step one:
Strip a LOT of quills in preparation for this. I used a cheap pack of saddle hackle for this. Grab the tip of the feathers and remove all the feather barbs from the rachis. After you have done this, take a pair of hemostats and clamp the base of the rachis. Submerge this material to be dyed in hot water with a bit of dish soap. This will make the dye take easier, and clean the material.

Step two:

Grab a mason jar and fill it with water, about 3/4 the amount to completely submerge the material to be dyed. Next grab some packs of Kool-Aid. You need quite a bit because as the material absorbs the dye, the solution will become weaker. Always use more then you think, for a large mason jar I used 8 packs. As you can see I used a few different packs of kool-aid to get the color I wanted. You want to be careful mixing the colors as they dont really follow the color wheel style of mixing.  The next step is adding an acid to "burn" the dye into the material. Grab a jug of vinegar and add the other 1/4 of the volume needed to submerge the material.

Step three:
Mix the solution, and microwave for 2 mins. You want the mixture to get really hot, so be careful when removing the solution from the microwave. The heat and vinegar are what actually set the dye in the material. Once this is complete, rinse the material to be dyed under warm water to remove any of the soap. Then submerge the material in the solution, and swirl it around for a bit. How long it takes for the material to absorb the dye is dependent on a lot of factors. Temperature, amount of vinegar, amount of kool-aid, and how long you soaked the material before hand. So check frequently to ensure you get the color you want. The quills absorbed the dye in a few seconds, while a previous dye job took an hour to get the color I wanted. Also remember that the color will be darker when wet, and lighter when dry.

Step four:

Once you reach the desired color rinse the material thoroughly with warm water.

Step five:
Thoroughly dry the material before you through the mix away to ensure you have the correct color. As you can see you can get some pretty cool colors from this method. Here is the final result of the quill dye job, and a white India cock neck that I dyed a silver doctorish blue. I used iced blue raspberry for that one.

Hope this helps some of you!