Dyeing a multi-fiber blend without damaging the spandex

Name: Sonia

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I have browsed through your fascinating website for the past couple of days, in search of advice on dyeing, which I am attempting for the first time. I purchased three of the same garment thinking that I would experiment with dyeing two of them in different colors. The garment is made of 44% silk, 36% cotton,17% nylon, and 3% spandex, and it can only be washed in COLD water. Because I am not going for a solid uniform color, I thought it would be interesting to dye in stages, for the different fibers. But I learned that silk and nylon require hot water, which will damage the garment. Before I give up, do you have any suggestions? Thank you for your help.

Yes, the hot water needed for dyeing silk and nylon with acid dyes is not ideal for spandex. If the care instructions advise you to wash in cold water only, 105°F or below, I'd suggest skipping all steps involving hot water. You'll still be able to dye these garments, though, no problem. (Be sure to prewash them as carefully as possible before dyeing.) Avoid all hot-water dyes, including all-purpose dyes such as Rit; instead, buy some Procion MX dye, probably by mail-order.

Note that the word "cold", in the textile industry, does not mean icy; using temperatures of 70°F to 105°F (or 21°C to 40°C), which are ideal for Procion MX dyes with soda ash, is considered "cold" dyeing.

Silk can easily be dyed like cotton, with a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye, plus soda ash. Your fiber blend, 80% of which is either cotton or silk, is thus 80% dyeable with fiber reactive dyes. Dyeing four-fifths of the fiber content of a blend is sufficient to get good results. The nylon and spandex will remain undyed, if you use Procion MX dye with soda ash, but that will probably look just fine.

If what you really want is a solid color, I recommend that you use a washing machine, Procion MX dye, soda ash, and salt, carefully following a good recipe such as the one provided by Dharma Trading Company. See my page on washing machine dyeing. For a single garment, use a five-gallon bucket, scaling down the ingredients (water, dye, soda ash, and lots of salt) proportionally, and stir constantly for an hour, using the same procedure as for dyeing in the washing machine.

For a non-uniform color, I recommend that you try low water immersion. It is the easiest-to-do of all dyeing methods, and the results are usually beautiful.

The idea of dyeing the different fibers in a blend to different colors is an interesting one. Dyeing a blend with cotton and silk in it is complicated by the fact that all cotton dyes will also color silk. Silk is a truly versatile fiber in its ability to take different types of dyes. Premixed colors will generally produce a different color on silk than on cotton, since it's a protein fiber and reacts more quickly or more slowly with each of the different individual fiber reactive dyes. However, if you use one of the eleven or so available unmixed single-hue Procion MX colors, then the silk and the cotton in the blend will end up nearly the same color.

You can buy a dye kit called Alter Ego, which is sold by various mail-order suppliers including Dharma Trading, which is designed to color the cotton or rayon in a blend a different color than the silk in the blend. It's expensive, but contains a special reserving agent to prevent the cotton dye from staining the silk, so, for example, the silk backing of a piece of devore silk/rayon velvet will dye a different color than the rayon plush. This is probably not something you'll want to try on this garment, but it's an interesting concept. See "alter ego dyes", a discussion in the Dye Forum from January 2007.

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Posted: Tuesday - August 24, 2010 at 07:25 AM

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Dyeing a multi-fiber blend without damaging the spandex

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