Name: Jo Anna

Message: I have a customer who wants black baby bloomers.  I can only find white.  I tried to dye a pair and the cotton eyelet is perfect, but of course the cotton/polyester fabric is only gray.  Is there any practical way for me to dye these as he may want quantities of these in the future.  Thanks so much in advance for your help.


Dyeing the polyester portion of the fabric cannot be done with ordinary dyes. You would have to buy disperse dyes. If you're in the US, this would be only from PRO Chemical & Dye or Aljo Manufacturing. (See my "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World" page, searching for "disperse".) To use the dye, you would have to boil the bloomers for an hour with the dye and a somewhat toxic carrier chemical. After all of that, you would still have to dye the cotton in the bloomers with fiber reactive or direct dye, since disperse dye works only on synthetic fibers.

The only realistic alternative I can think of is to buy 100% cotton baby bloomers and dye them with good, easy-to-use fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. The cotton baby bloomers sold by Dharma Trading Company aren't made of eyelet lace, but they are very cute, and Dharma sells cotton lace separately (not eyelet lace) which can be sewed on and dyed. To me, this approach is far more desirable than dyeing polyester.

Or, you could buy 100% cotton eyelet lace, and hire a seamstress to sew it into garments for you, before or after dyeing.

For more information, see my page on "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes".

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