Name: Christy
Message: Hello,
Please help me!  How should I dye material that is 85% polyester and 15%lycra?  I want to do a tan/skin color.  Please, please, please help me.  

This fiber combination simply cannot be dyed. Polyester can be dyed only by subjecting it to high heat, while lycra cannot tolerate anything hot. 

Most dyes will not color polyester at all, so you have to use disperse dyes, but disperse dyes must be boiled with the fabric for an hour. If you boil your lycra-containing fabric, it will be ruined. Do not use water hotter than that recommended on the care instruction label for this material. See "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes" and "How to Dye Lycra".

To dye a lycra blend to a tan/skin color, look for fabric that is made of cotton and lycra, with no polyester at all. For example, Dharma Trading Company in the US sells PFD ("Prepared For Dyeing") fabric that is made of 90% cotton plus 10% spandex, a blend which is easily dyed with cool water fiber reactive dyes. Your email address suggests that you're in the Cocos islands, so you may need to mail-order your fabric and dyes from Australia. Australian dyes that you can use on cotton/lycra include Tintex Cool Water dye—do not use hot water dye on lycra!—as well as Procion MX dyes, which can be mail-ordered from Kraftkolour or Batik Oetoro in Australia. Dylon Hand Dye is another cool water dye that can be used on cotton/lycra blends, but avoid any type of hot water dye that is also marketed by Dylon, or any other hot water dye, such as Rit or Tintex Hot Water Dye. Hot water dyes should never be used on Lycra®.

If you are determined to color the polyester/lycra fabric that you have, there is a possible alternative to dye. You can use a good fabric paint, instead. You want a fabric paint which is supposed to be thin, of course, one that mimics the effect of dye, not a puffy paint or a slick paint or any other dimensional paint. 

You cannot use ordinary artists' acrylic paints as they come from the tube, on fabric, because the paint will dry to a very stiff, hard, and scratchy feel. If you dilute the paint with a lot of water, it helps, though you can still feel the paint stiff on the fabric after it dries. You can do this for a theatrical production, if you have no other choice. Far better is to acquire some artists' fabric medium, again undoubtedly by mail-order only, from some art supply house. Fabric medium can be blended with artists' acrylic paints to make an acceptable fabric paint. With some brands of fabric medium, you will need to heat set the paint after it dries with a hot iron, as specified by the manufacturer's instructions. Some examples of fabric medium are Liquitex Fabric Medium and Golden Fabric Medium. In the US, Blick Art Materials is among the art supply stores that carry these acrylic fabric media.

The best fabric paints for coloring polyester may be the Jacquard Products paints, which are  supposed to work well on polyester. I think that these will give better results than a home-made mixture of fabric medium and acrylic paint. In Australia, you can mail-order Dye-Na-Flow, a Jacquard brand paint that flows like a dye, from The Thread Studio.

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