Message: Hi, 

first off, your shirts are amazing!!  Tie-dye has always been the favorite for me, I've just never gotten around to creating any.  My first attempt is a doozy, tho--I'm going to a Halloween Snuggie party and I want to TD mine.  Darker colored material just seems to have a more impressive look to it so I was going to go with that, but I'm not sure the best way to go about it.  In one area you say to use bleaching for dark colors but when I looked through your gallery you're talking about dyeing with colors, so I'm a bit confused.  

The most important thing to know, when choosing the dye for any project, is what fiber the fabric is made from. Snuggies, as well as the alternative brands such as Slankets and Freedom Blankets, are always made of polyester. This is a bit of a problem, though not an insurmountable one. You won't be able to dye a polyester garment with any ordinary sort of dye, since polyester can be dyed only with a special dye for synthetics, called disperse dye. Other dyes will rub off on furniture and wash out quickly in the laundry. You won't be able to use a tie-dye kit.

Dyeing polyester is a pain. You have to boil it with the dye in a huge cooking pot. There is a recipe for directly painting the disperse dye onto the polyester, just like tie-dye, but you must follow this step by steaming, or, preferably, using a pressure-cooker to pressure-steam the dye into the fiber. (An autoclave in a biology lab would be good for this.)

There is an easy alternative, a much easier way to apply disperse dye to polyester, but, like the dye above, it requires that you start with a pale color of fabric. You can make iron-on transfers using disperse dye crayons or paints, and then iron them on to your Snuggie. There's an example of this method at "Iron-on Fabric Crayons for Synthetic Fibers", which is on this site. This is a great project for a dye beginner. You can get very intense, dark colors, so starting with a light-colored background will not be a handicap for you in getting an impressive effect. You can even buy the dye crayons at a local fabric store, instead of having to wait for mail-order to get the dye.

The other alternative is to use fabric paints. Fabric paints are different from other paints in that they bind well to fabric and are soft, not scratchy. Ordinary paints are horribly scratchy on fabric after they dry. Unlike dyes, fabric paints can be used without hot water or steaming, which saves a lot of bother in tie-dyeing polyester. Not all fabric paints will work on polyester. The two that I generally recommend for polyester tie-dye are Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow and Dharma Pigment Dyes. Dharma will ship either of these overnight if you are in a real hurry. However, you must have a white or very pale color of fabric to use either of these types of fabric paints effectively.

You can't dye a material that is already dark and have noticeable results. Dye is transparent, so it will not even show on a dark background. Most fabric paints are as transparent as dye, and will not show up any better. However, there are a few fabric paints that are opaque. If the label for a fabric paint does not say opaque, you can assume it is transparent. If you find or mail-order some Neopaque fabric paint, it will show up well on a dark background. One caveat, however: paint that is thick enough to cover a dark material will not look like dye. It will look like paint. Still, a tie-dye-inspired design of bright colors could look very good on a black background.

Bleaching out the color from fabric can be a fun way to tie-dye, but there are limitations. You must never use household bleach on polyester, because the hypochlorite it contains will permanently damage the polyester, producing an ugly yellow stain that is impossible to remove. You can use other color removing chemicals on polyester, such as Rit Color Remover, Jacquard Color Remover, or Jacquard Discharge paste. All of these require high heat to work. Rit Color Remover and Jacquard Color Remover are best used in a huge cooking pot on the stove, though you can try them in the washing machine. Jacquard Discharge Paste can be activated with an iron. However, there is a huge problem: many dyes cannot be discharged by any means. You will not know until it's too late whether or not the Snuggie you buy can have its color removed, because it's impossible to know which dye the manufacturer used. It's impossible to tell whether color removal will work until you try it.

If you do succeed in removing color from your Snuggie, you can then color in the white spots with Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint or Fabric Transfer Crayon iron-ons. That would look great. I just don't know if you would get to that point.

I really do recommend that you start with a white or pale-colored Snuggie or Slanket, if you can find one, and then apply enough color to get the impressive result you want, either using Dharma Pigment Dyes or the Iron-on dye crayons. Keep adding color until it looks good to you.

Let me point out that tie-dyeing cotton is much easier. You will find it easy to get started with tie-dyeing t-shirts, when you get around to that. Just don't try to use Rit dye, because all-purpose dye is unsuitable for tie-dyeing. A good tie-dye kit of almost any other brand will contain fiber reactive dyes that work great on cotton, though.

All of the fabric paints I have mentioned can be shipped overnight from Dharma Trading Company. They also carry the Fabric Transfer Crayons, Jacquard Color Remover, and Jacquard Discharge Paste. Local crafts stores sometimes carry the Jacquard fabric paints such as Neopaque or Dye-Na-Flow, and any drug store should carry Rit Color Remover.

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