Let’s Mottle Some Wool With Coffee Today!

 

I’m pretty sure that I’ve shown how this is done before but rather than search through all my posts to find it, I’ll just show it again!

I sometimes use coffee to dye my wools.  As long as it’s done right, the results are as good as, if not better than using regular dyes.

The coffee gives it a really nice rich brown color and is perfect for bunnies, sheep, and santa beards.

So let’s get started…

First thing is to soak the wool in some warm soapy water.  I use regular hair shampoo for the soap but non-bleach type dish soap can be used too.

While it soaks, I preheat the oven to 325.

After soaking the wool for about 15 mins or so, I squish the wet wool onto my old baking sheet. 

Since this is a fairly large piece of wool … about 15” x 60”, I used this size baking sheet.  If I mottle or dye smaller pieces of wool, I adjust the size of the baking sheet accordingly.  I have a few assorted smaller baking dishes that I use for smaller amounts of wool.

I tried to evenly space and crumple the wool across the baking sheet.

The trick to good mottling is to crumble that wool to make high and low spaces.  So if you’re just doing a small piece of wool, just make sure that it’s bunched up on your baking surface.

I pour spots of brewed coffee onto the wool.  To get good mottling, I don’t submerse the wool in coffee, I randomly spot it.

If I just want the wool mostly white with a little brown mottling, I lightly spot the wool with the coffee. 

In this case, I want more brown than white so naturally more coffee is poured on.

Before putting this in the oven, I make sure that the wool is wet enough.  If needed, I put a little extra water on or add a little extra coffee.  I don’t want this to dry out and burn while it’s baking. 

I will bake this about 20-30 min, watching it closely to make sure it doesn’t get too dry.  If it’s getting too dry, I either add a little more water, or if I don’t mind if it gets darker, I’ll add more coffee.

After the baking period, I rinse the wool well with cold water.

Then I soak it in some nice smelling shampoo to get rid of that coffee smell.  If you don’t mind your wool smelling like coffee then just skip this step!

 

After rinsing again, I’ll put this in the dryer with a couple pairs of old jeans.  The heavy weight of the jeans will fluff this wool up nicely while it’s drying.  I’ll dry it until it’s almost dry.  I want a little bit of moisture in it so that the wrinkles will easily smooth out. 

If I happen to dry it too much, I’ll just have to take extra time to steam iron the wrinkles out.

And here it is, dried and ready to use!

The mottled wool is shown against the original color natural wool so that you can see the difference.

 

Happy Day everyone … and have some fun with coffee today!