Name: Teri B.
Message: I have 3 yards of silk Habotai that I would like to dye for a garment. I would like to get a purple/blue mixture of colors, but I am not sure what would be the best way to dye the fabric.  I don't know much about dyeing more than a yard at a time, and I usually dye cotton. Do you have any suggestions?  I don't want to wreck this much silk if I can keep from it.  Thanks!

What I would do is use low water immersion dyeing, the easiest of all ways to dye, with Procion MX type dyes and soda ash. You can dye silk with Procion MX dyes exactly as you would dye cotton. Here is a link to a page I've written about LWI dyeing: "How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing".

First, prewash your fabric to remove any finishes that will prevent the dye from smoothly reaching the fabric. Then select a container made of plastic or glass into which you can fit your fabric. Pleat or crumple the fabric smoothly with your hands and cram it into your container. Mix blue and red or purple dye together, preferably choosing from the unmixed Procion MX type dyes to avoid any clashing of colors. (See "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?".) Pour additional water on, if necessary, to almost but not quite cover the silk. Allow the dyes to creep and blend on the fabric for half an hour, then mix soda ash in water and pour it over the entire piece of fabric. You do not need to press or stir in any way unless some of the fabric needs to be pushed below the surface of the dyebath. After an hour, or several hours if the room is cool, you can rinse out in plain cool water, and then wash in hot water, if the silk can tolerate hot water, to remove excess dye. If the results are less intense and bright in color than you like, simply repeat the entire process, just as before.

If you are interested in keeping the silk as shiny and stiff as possible, you will not want to use the soda ash method, which tends to soften the hand of stiffer silks, but the acid method that you can use requires some added heat. Since you are using habotai, a soft, thin weave of silk, I imagine that this is not enough of an issue for you to be worth the added bother.

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