I never thought kool aid would be such a powerful dye! I bought a big bag of white strung saddle for $2-$3 last time I was at cabelas to use for the quills. Did some experimenting and this is the results. The recipes I found are way too strong. I used 1 packet per cup of water and the recipes I found online call for 2 packets per cup of water. 2 minutes in the microwave with no vinegar. Rinsed them and let them soak in tap water for about 10 minutes hoping they would fade a little and they didn't fade at all as you can see. I threw a couple stripped peacock quills in with mixed results. Peacock took the red pretty well but the yellow and the blue didn't change much. I think when I try next time I will cut the recipe in half for both kool aid packets and time in the micro or maybe skip the microwave and just let them soak so I can keep an eye on them. I just used a mason jar with 2 cups of water and 2 kool aid packets. The red was black cherry, yellow was lemonade, and blue was blue raspberry lemonade. It took about an hour for everything including stripping the hackle quills by hand. Peacock was already stripped from my last experiment. I still have a lot of strung saddle and a bunch of kool aid so I'll have to try it again. Apparently green and orange makes olive so I'll have to try that one next time too. Red and yellow came out a lot brighter than I expected but maybe they will tie some decent flies? The red peacock is hard to see in the photo (upper left) but they came out a pretty good color for some red quill flies.
