Something A Little Different This Week: Rope Dyeing!

Something a little different this week: rope dyeing!

I’m not an expert by any stretch, but I thought I’d share my method in case any of you were curious, but wary of ruining expensive rope.

What I describe below was relatively painless, didn’t damage my rope, and left the lovely bright red colour pictured above. It doesn’t come off on skin or fade

—

What you’ll need:

Cherry Red Rit Dye (or colour of your choice)

Jute rope (my longest piece was 30’)

4L pot you don’t care about (it’ll get ruined with dye) Note: If you have longer pieces than 30’, you’ll need a bigger pot. Mine just barely fit

Rubber gloves

Step 1: Wash your rope with a natural soap & rinse very well. Even if you haven’t treated it with oil, you want to get all residue off of there

Put on the gloves. From here on whenever you interact with the rope/dye, wear gloves.

Step 2: Add ½ of the Rit bottle to 4 Liters of water at a low boil (so not splashing everywhere, but bubbles still visible)

Step 3: Put the rope in, and move around until it’s all submerged. Note: the rope will immediately become quite rigid- that’s normal and will ease up after drying

Step 4: Lower heat so it’s no longer boiling, only steaming. You don’t want to scald the rope at the bottom of the pot

Step 5: Leave it for 20 minutes (not literally, of course. Keep an eye on it ;))

Step 6: Move the whole pot to your sink and, using disposable chopsticks (or anything you don’t mind ruining with dye), move rope into the other sink. The reason I move the whole works is to avoid getting dye-water everywhere. It stains instantly

Step 7: Rinse rope in cold water until it’s running clear 

Step 8: Hang to dry (looping a few times so it doesn’t touch the ground is OK, but it’s best to have it as loose as possible – not tightly coiled)

As you can see, it dries several shades lighter – so note that when you’re looking at your rope while it’s still in the pot. If it isn’t as dark as you’d like, you can add more dye to the mix for a more intense colour

— Hopefully at least a few people will enjoy this… because I love colourful kink! ♥♥♥

♥ Hazel