Teacher Appreciation Gift: Home Made Play Silks

My girls go to a really sweet preschool. Next year they will be moving schools - so I wanted to thank their teachers for giving them such a lovely and happy experience. I asked their movement and music teacher if there was anything she would like for her classroom and what do you know - she wanted some colored silks for the movement classes!

We decided 30" square silks would be the best size as her classes range from just under 2's to 4+.

Again I used food colors to ensure the silks were super kid friendly. I used the McCormick Assorted Food & Egg Dye and the McCormick Neon Food & Egg Dyes.

I have posted a previous post about kid friendly dyeing techniques here. But to recap -  

- Soak silk in hot tap water with a glug of vinegar while you make your mixture. (I'm in a debate about whether soaking the silks before hand is really necessary - if I do this again I will try using dry silks.)
- Mixture: 1/2 bottle of 0.25oz food coloring with 16 ounces of hot tap water + 6 ounces of vinegar.
- Squeeze water out of silk and place silk in a pyrex bowl with the dye mixture.
- Leave it there and stir occasionally - you will see when the dye has been absorbed as the liquid will become a lot clearer - approx 20 mins - although we did leave ours hanging around most of the afternoon.

- Rinse in cold wash & dry on hottest cycle in tumble dryer.

Amazingly bright colors. My only disappointment was that the neon 'pink' and the assorted 'red' are practically the same hue.

TIP: If your silk ends up looking like this first try (I rushed it) do not panic - just make another mixture of dye, water & vinegar and resoak the silk.

You can see how bright the green came out (far left) on the second soak.