Coloring Crochet Flowers: Break out the Sharpies!

Posted on by melissa

I love dyeing things. I’m taken by the idea that something can start off one color and you can transform it by making it the color you want it to be. Have a sweater you wish was darker? Dye it! Unfortunately, dyeing is a messy, time consuming, and sometimes unpredictable process. I do not do it as much as I would like to. When I made these cotton crochet flowers, I thought about how I could dye them and hit upon the idea to use Sharpies and rubbing alcohol. After playing around with it, I am thrilled to share my technique and results of coloring crochet flowers!

 Inspiration

Like a lot of people, I took some of my inspiration from something I saw on Pinterest. Clicking the pin I saw took me to a site unaffiliated with the artist. Eventually I googled the watermark on the pictures and got to this site showing the steps for a painted crochet butterfly brooch. Seriously, take a look at this beautiful crochet work. It looks like porcelain. I think it’s incredible! I am not sure what kind of paint the artist is using, but it looks like watercolors. It got me thinking about ways to use color in crochet other than by finding a lot of colored yarn. Coloring crocheted objects with paints or other colors seemed like it could lead to a world of new crafting project possibilities.

My other inspiration is hydrangeas. I find it amazing that fiddling with the ph level in the soil turns them different colors. Stephen and I had hydrangeas at our wedding and that guided my color choices about every other wedding decoration. Some people are really good at working with colors. I need some parameters or models to guide what I do with colors. Thankfully, nature provides some beautiful ones.

Crocheting the flowers

I have linked to Karen Bailey’s tiny flowers pattern at todolwen before and I will probably do it again. My smaller flowers used Karen Bailey’s pattern. For the larger flowers, I used my own variation on that pattern, detailed below.

Pattern for the larger flowers

Using size 30 crochet cotton, make a magic ring.

In the magic ring, *chain 4, trc2tog, chain 4 and slip stitch into the magic ring. Repeat from * 4 more times. Finish Off. Weave in Ends.

You could do many variations on this flower, including fatter petals with more dc stitches or trc stitches in each petal, taller skinnier petal by using ch 5 and dtr stitches, etc. Because these are so quick and easy, it’s fun to play around with different flower shapes.

While weaving in ends is never super fun, on these little things it takes about as long as making a flower takes. Luckily, that’s not very long. I can usually make a flower in ten minutes and weave in ends in about 7. They are really fun to make and before you know it you have a bunch of them.

Coloring crochet flowers

Once you get your ends woven in, You can just take a sharpie and mark it up. Let the colors bleed into the fibers of the thread by holding the tip to the thread for a few seconds. Try coloring the flower with multiple colors. I colored both sides to make sure the color made it to the whole flower. Once I was happy with how much color I had on the flower, I dripped rubbing alcohol onto the flower to let the colors bleed into the fibers even more. This makes the colors bleed together a bit, too. You can achieve some fun effects by using different shades or coloring edges with a different color. Sharpies have an alcohol-reactive ink, so they will run in rubbing alcohol (but not in water). Rubbing alcohol essentially turns the Sharpies into paint or ink.

Coloring crochet flowers with Sharpies!

Coloring crochet flowers: results

I tried a couple of different color combinations.

Purple and blue colored crochet flower

The middle and petals of the flower used the dark purple. I outlined the petals in the blue. There were some spots where I colored the flower inconsistently enough that it dried with some fading. I ended up liking the effect, so I did not go back and add more color.

Crochet flowers colored with purple, lavender, and periwinkle Sharpies

For this flower, I started in the middle with the dark purple, then added a ring of the lavender around the edge of the dark purple and did the very edges with the periwinkle color.

Blue and lavender colored crochet flowers

I did a similar thing with this flower. I colored blue in the middle, did a ring of periwinkle around that, and finished the edges with lavender. They lighten up a little once they dry. Feel free to go back over them with more color if they lighten up too much.

Sharpies and colored crochet flowers

I would love to see results from any one else trying this technique! I’m busy thinking up new color schemes and possible projects for using these flowers. Please let me know in the comments if you try this!

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