I want to dye basketball socks, orange on a royal blue sock. Can I dye the whole sock, or do I have to spot dye just the white areas?

Name: George

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Message: I want to dye some Nike ELITE basketball socks. My son wants the white parts to be orange on a royal blue sock. Can I dye the whole sock, or do I have to spot dye just white areas. Thanks and appreciate the advice.

This is not nearly as simple an idea as it seems to be at first.

First, Nike Elite basketball socks are treated with a surface finish called Dry-Fit. Surface finishes will tend to prevent any dye from penetrating to the fiber underneath, thus interfering with the dyeing process. They may also interfere with fabric paint, making it adhere less tightly to the fiber than you would like.

Next, and much worse, their fiber content is impossible to dye. Nike Elite basketball socks are composed of a blend of 62% polyester, 21% nylon, 15% cotton, and 2% spandex. The problem here is the combination of polyester with spandex. Spandex is an extremely heat-sensitive fiber and should never be subjected to temperatures over 140°F (more ideally, no temperatures over 105°F); at higher temperatures, it is likely to lose its shape and therefore its ability to stretch and contract appropriately. In contrast, polyester cannot be dyed at temperatures anywhere near as low as 140°F; the minimum temperature for dyeing polyester is far higher, at least 190°F, and a full boiling temperature of 212°, or even higher under pressure, works better. Because their dyeing needs are in conflict, the fibers in the polyester/spandex blends you see are always dyed separately, before they are blended together. (See "How to Dye Spandex".)

So, the conclusion is, you will not be able to dye these socks at all. Will you be able to color them another way? You might be able to use a fabric paint that is supposed to work on polyester. It will wear off more quickly than a true dye, if you had a dyeable fiber blend, but your fiber blend is not dyeable, so fabric paint is your only option.

Which brings us back to the question you thought you were asking, which is whether you can apply orange on top of royal blue. All dyes, and most fabric paints, are transparent, so the original color shows right through any color you apply on top of it. Since orange is opposite blue on the color wheel, orange dye applied on top of royal blue fabric will create a dull, dark brown. That's not what you're looking for. Although opaque fabric paints do exist, which are capable of covering the original color, they require a heavier, thicker application, so that the dry paints will feel scratchier on the fabric, and they will tend to show wear more visibly. Conclusion: if you must change the color of Nike Elite basketball socks, you should apply your orange fabric paint on the white sections only. By the way, you probably should not expect the fabric paint to last through the entire life of the socks.

Not all fabric paints will work on polyester. The company Jacquard Products, which makes several different types of fabric paint, including Dye-Na-Flow, a fabric paint that is designed to be almost as thin as dye, says that their fabric paints will all work on polyester, so I recommend looking for them. We don't know how well any fabric paint will be able to adhere to the surface finishes on the Nike Elite basketball socks, so I recommend that you try coloring only one pair, and watch through several wash cycles to see how well it wears. It's important to always test whatever materials you are using before investing a lot of time or materials into the effort. I strongly recommend that you always turn the socks inside out for laundering; line-drying instead of machine-drying will reduce the amount of abrasion the socks are exposed to.

You will get far better results, in dyeing socks, if you choose socks that are made of a natural fiber, or at least of fibers whose dyeing characteristics are not as incompatible as polyester and spandex. Cotton/spandex blend socks, for example, or rayon/spandex, are much better for dyeing, because both cotton and rayon can be dyed with a cool water fiber reactive dye, which does no harm at all to the spandex in the blend. I like the bamboo rayon socks that are sold by Dharma Trading Company. Polyester socks could be dyed by boiling them with disperse dyes, but only if there is no spandex in the blend to be damaged by the heat.

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Posted: Thursday - August 11, 2011 at 03:02 PM

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I want to dye basketball socks, orange on a royal blue sock. Can I dye the whole sock, or do I have to spot dye just the white areas?

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