Name: Kimberly 

Message: Hi. I have a white plush bunny costume that I need to dye black for halloween. What kind of dye would work the best and what would be the best way to do it?

It depends on the fiber content of the plush. Is it made of cotton, or acrylic, or polyester, or nylon, or what? This is a very important question. If you use the wrong kind of dye, it will just rinse right out of the fabric, and your effort and the cost of your supplies will be wasted.

Can you snip off a bit of material from an inside seam to do a burn test? Nylon, acrylic, and polyester burn differently, they produce different smells as they burn, and they leave a different ash or bead after burning. Check out these two sites:

• Ditzy Prints' Fiber Burn Chart
• Fabrics.net Fabric Identification

When you snip out your test sample, be sure to get the part of the fabric you want to dye. Don't worry about the fiber content of the backing, since it's the surface fibers that show for the plush fabric.

If your plush is made from cotton or rayon (not very likely), then the fabric will be very easy to dye with a cool water fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, or Dylon Permanent Dye, or Tulip One Step Fashion Dye. (These dyes will not work on polyester or acrylic, and they will work on nylon only if vinegar plus heat is substituted for soda ash.) All purpose dye, such as Rit or Tintex, can also be used on cotton or nylon; though the results are poor compared to fiber reactive dye, and their requirement for heat during application makes them much more difficult to use properly, they can be good enough for a one-time use as a Halloween costume.

For all of the fibers that cannot be dyed with a cool water dye such as Procion MX dye, you will have to invest in a very large non-aluminum dyeing pot. All hot water dyes require a dyeing pot for use. This can be a significant investment. The pot should be large enough to allow the costume to move freely in the boiling water as you stir it with the dye. You should not reuse a dyeing pot for cooking after you've dyed fabric in it, because textile dyes have not been tested as safe for use in food preparation containers. The only dye that is suitable for use in cooking pots is food coloring, which will not work on most fibers; textile dyes such as Rit should not be used in your good cooking pots.

If, instead of cotton or rayon, you find that your plush is made of polyester, you cannot use any of the dyes mentioned above. All dyes that work on natural fibers will completely fail to work on polyester or acrylic. You will have to mail-order a special type of dye called disperse dye. You can get this from PRO Chemical & Dye in Massachusetts, Aljo Dye in New York, or Batik Oetoro in Australia. A new brand of disperse dye, Jacquard Products' "iDye Poly", can be ordered from Blick Art Materials or Dharma Trading Company in the US, as well as Fibrecrafts in the UK.

Acrylic is the hardest case. Acrylic fabric can be dyed with disperse dyes, but the darkest color you can obtain will be a medium tone: gray, not black. Unfortunately, the only other type of dye that will work on acrylic plush is called basic dye; this type of dye is more toxic than disperse dye, and some of them may be carcinogenic and are not at all suitable to use in your home, for safety reasons. You can buy modified basic dyes from Aljo Dyes in New York (be sure to tell them what fiber you are dyeing, so they can help you choose your dyes).

Most microfiber is made of polyester, but some is made of nylon. Nylon is a completely synthetic fabric, but it can be dyed like wool, by heating it with acid dyes. The best acid dyes are the Lanaset dyes or Washfast Acid dyes, but you can find less wash-resistant acid dyes in all-purpose dyes such as Rit or Tintex. You will get best results if you add a little harmless acid to your dyebath, say six tablespoons of white vinegar per gallon of water. Dissolve the dye in the water, add vinegar, and then heat the nylon gently in the dyebath to a temperature no higher than 185°F(a low simmer). You can get brilliant results by dyeing nylon with acid dyes. It can also be dyed with disperse dyes, but there's no reason to go to the trouble of using disperse dyes, since acid dyes are easier to buy and to use.

One final possibility is a thin fabric paint, such as Jacquard's Dye-Na-Flow or Dharma Trading Company's Dharma Pigment Dyes. These two fabric paints will work on polyester or nylon, and will probably work on acrylic as well. If you use fabric paint, you must comb through the plush before it dries, if the nap is long enough for you to do so, in order to prevent the gluelike binder in the paint from sticking together the surface fibers in the plush. These two brands of fabric paint are very thin and smooth and will not stiffen the fibers in you plush very much. Other fabric paints may affect the feel of the plush considerably more, and paints which are not labeled for use on fabric will make the plush hard, stiff, and scratchy.

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