Message: Hi.  Fabulous website!  I have cotton sofa covers that are a faded yellowy colour.  I am happy to have them a pale colour, like cream, or a deep crimsom.  I bought some Dylon pre dye, but it needs to be used at 90 degrees C.  I tried a wash at this temp on a spare cover and it shrunk! (If all else fails, I will put up with the shrinkage, but then I'm struggling to find a deep red dye). I am in the process of trying household bleach in my machine at 40 degrees C, but, so far, doesn't seem to be working.  Any clues please?  Many thanks for your time.

Hi Debi,

Not all dyes can be removed with bleach, and not all dyes can be removed with reductive discharges such as Dylon Pre Dye, but, in your case, since you like the idea of deep red, dyeing with the right type of dyes provides an easy solution.

You can dye your cotton covers at temperatures as low as 21°C if you use Procion MX dye (though 30°C to 40°C is even better). Afterwards, we usually like to wash out the excess unattached dye in hot water, but you can use cool water for this if you wash several times and be sure when laundering later to wash separately, in case there is still any unbound dye present. Washing thoroughly in cool water is sufficient to remove the loose dye particles that otherwise might rub off of dry fabric.

The best way to dye fabric a single solid color is in a washing machine, though you can also use a bucket, and stir a lot. (It works just as well, but is a lot more work.) See "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine? ".

In the UK, you can mail-order Procion MX dye from several different dye suppliers, including Fibrecrafts. See my page on "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World", in the section of European sources. Links and contact info are listed there. To go with your Procion MX dyes, you will also need soda ash to fix the dye, and a large quantity of ordinary table salt because of the large volume of water required for machine dyeing.

Alternatively, you can use Dylon Machine Dye in place of Procion MX dye. Dylon Machine Dyes, which are designed for front-loading washing machines, are labeled with instructions saying to use them in hot water, but they will work in lower temperatures if you allow more time. They contain fiber reactive dyes that are similar to Procion MX dyes, but slightly less reactive, so they like warmer temperatures for dyeing. If 40° is okay for your cotton sofa covers, then use that temperature. Dylon Machine Dyes are available in Europe and Australia, but not in North America. If their red is too bright for you, you can try adding a small quantity of the black.

There will be a problem if your sofa covers were ever treated with a stain-resistant finish such as Scotch Guard, or any water-repellent finish. Otherwise, they should be pretty easy to dye.

Hi Paula
 
Many thanks for your reply.  It really is very kind of you to help.
 
I was going to use the Dylon machine dye, but Dylon informed me that I'd have to strip the colour out of the covers first (yellow), or they will turn orange.  They also said that they don't have any red with any depth - like a crimson.
 
Having read lots of info on your website, it seems that colour stripping is a hit and miss affair!!  Certainly, bleach hasn't worked....and I am reluctant to use the Dylon Pre-Dye, because it needs a v hot wash, so back to the shrinkage problems!  I am ok up to 40 degrees C.
 
Do you think if I used a Procion MX dye, the existing yellow colour wouldn't be a problem?  I really am happy to end up with either cream/white covers or red ones.  Just whichever is the most likely to work.
 
Many thanks again.
Debi

If your sofa covers were a brilliant, deep yellow, then yes, overdyeing them with red might produce an orangish color. However, it sounds like what you have there is a pale, faded, washed-out yellow. A pale yellow will not interfere significantly with dyeing a deep red. Furthermore, the color red, on clothing, is obtained by mixing a magenta dye with a yellow dye. (There are very few true red dyes, except for colors premixed with magenta and yellow, and the magenta dyes yield a wider range of possible colors for mixing, anyway.) If you dye your covers with a deep red that is on the opposite side from yellow in color, a somewhat magenta-colored red, then you should be able to reach the color you want. If the yellow is pale and you use a lot of dye, the original color will almost not show at all, overwhelmed by the amount of dye in the new color.

Note that you could not do this so easily if you were trying to produce a pale color that contains no yellow at all, such as a light blue or lavender. Colors that contain yellow in their mixture are orange, red, brown, green, and, of course, black.

From the other approach, while sulfur-containing color removers certainly do their work best with heat, they have some activity at lower temperatures. You could go ahead and try one at the 40°C you've already used on the covers. It might work, it might not, depending on what dye was used to color the sofa covers before; it is always impossible to tell whether a particular dye can be removed until you try it. Avoid the fumes from any of the sulfur-containing color removers, since they can provoke an asthma attack in susceptible people; otherwise, they are less toxic than household bleach, but you should use good ventilation anyway. If you have not already done so, check out my page "What chemicals can be used to remove dye?" (scroll down to the section on reductive discharges).

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