Name: Lenee

Message:   Hello. Great site! I have a sweatshirt that is 50% cotton 50% polyester... how should I dye it? I love the Jaquard Bright Blue that you recommend, how will that turn out? thank you

I'm afraid that your blended-fiber sweatshirt is not the best choice if you want a bright blue color. The polyester will not take the dye, so the most you will be able to get would be a pastel blue. 

It is possible to dye both the polyester and the cotton, using two different dyes, one being either fiber reactive dye or direct dye for the cotton, and the other being disperse dye for the polyester. However, this is a cumbersome and expensive process. In order to use a hot-water dye like disperse dye, or direct dye, you will need a very large non-aluminum cooking pot, one which you do not plan to ever use again for food. It's a lot less costly to use a cold-water dye, or fabric paint, so that you do not need to invest in an expensive dyeing pot. Dyeing polyester requires a lot of boiling, and constant stirring, and the results do not always come out as desired.

Is your sweatshirt white? A shirt that is any color other than white will not produce the same bright colors as a white one. Since dye is transparent, the original color always shows through dye, and also through most fabric paints.

Alternatively, you could buy a new 100% cotton sweatshirt, which is very easy to dye in the brightest of colors, using a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX. If you can't find a 100% cotton sweatshirt locally, you can buy one by mail-order from Dharma Trading Company, which sells a great many different items of clothing that are ready to dye. Be careful not to buy anything that has a stain-resistant finish, which would tend to repel dye; sometimes you see stain-resistant garments in local stores such as Walmart or Target, but you should avoid those if you want to dye them.

It is possible to color a 50% polyester/50% cotton sweatshirt using fabric paint instead of dye. Some fabric paints are labeled as working on synthetic fibers as well as cotton fibers. Don't get a fabric paint that is labeled as working only on natural fibers, for your fiber blend sweatshirt. Good choices for fabric paints include Dharma Pigment "Dyes" and Jacquard Products' Dye-na-Flow. I think you will get brighter and prettier results with fiber reactive dye on a 100% cotton sweatshirt, though.

The dye in the Jacquard 232 Bright Blue has been discontinued by the manufacturer. However, there are other wonderful bright blue dyes in the Procion MX dye line. I particularly like cerulean blue, which is the same as Procion blue MX-G. It's a very bright blue, slightly more on the green side than the Cibacron F-GF that was in the Jacquard 232 Bright Blue. Both Jacquard Products and Dharma Trading Company sell this blue dye, as do all other sellers of Procion MX dye (the only exception I know being in the Czech Republic). Jacquard sells it as 070 Cerulean, and Dharma sells it as PR 23 Cerulean Blue. If you order a sweatshirt from Dharma, you may wish to buy some Procion dye from them, as well. Both companies also sell mixtures of different dyes, which can help you to more closely match any blue you are thinking of.

After buying a 100% cotton sweatshirt and some Procion dye, you can follow the instructions on either of the following two pages, to get a good result:
   • "How to Dye with Fiber Reactive Dye" or
   • "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?".
You can use a plastic bucket, rather than a cooking pot, since Procion MX dyes do not require heating, but do make sure that your temperature is 70°F or warmer when you dye the shirt.

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