How can I dye white craft felt, the kind like you can buy for about thirty cents at Walmart?

Since the cheap craft felt is made out of 100% polyester, you cannot use any ordinary fabric dye. Polyester can be dyed only with disperse dye. Disperse dye for immersion dyeing in water is not sold at your local store, but must be purchased by mail-order from a company such as PRO Chemical & Dye.

However, you can use disperse dye fabric crayons, which are widely available. Do not confuse fabric crayons with wax crayons! You cannot use ordinary crayons for this, only the special fabric crayons. Your local sewing store should sell fabric crayons. They look just like ordinary crayons; be careful not to let them get mixed up.

To use disperse dye fabric crayons, use them to draw designs on paper, just as you would use ordinary wax crayons, then place the paper design face-down on the white polyester felt. Put plain paper or rags on top to protect your iron, and put a lot of newspaper underneath to protect your ironing board. Set your iron to "hot" or "cotton", and press the design onto the fabric while moving the iron around so that you do not burn the fabric, as directed on the package of fabric crayons. The fabric crayon marks look dull on the paper, but become bright when transferred to the polyester. See "Iron-on Fabric Crayons for Synthetic Fibers" for an example.

Another alternative is to use a fabric paint that is advertised as being able to work on polyester, such as Jacquard's Dye-Na-Flow or Dharma Pigment Dyes. These are thin paints which mimic the feel of dye.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

[This material was first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on June 6, 2008.]