Looking for a way to piece-dye cotton/polyester garments with nylon zippers

Name: Peter

—ADVERTISEMENTS—

Dye polyester and poly/cotton blends

Information about how to dye multi-fiber blends

John Shore's
Blends Dyeing

Country or region: The Netherlands

Message: As a textile (searching) agent, interested to find a way for the piece dyeing of cotton and polyester garments with a nylon zipper on a cotton or polyester tape, I visited your site. Although I have not yet found the solution, I want to communicate I am impressed by your knowledge and the quantity and quality of the information on your site. Good luck with your health and kind regards.

I'm glad the site has been helpful to you. The answer to dyeing anything with polyester is to use disperse dyes. No other class of dyes will work. Although nylon is usually dyed with acid dyes, it, too can take disperse dyes, which work only on synthetic fibers. See my pages, "How to dye nylon" and "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes".

Cotton will not take disperse dye, so you must use a different type of dye for that, either reactive dye or direct dye. See "About Direct Dyes" and "About Fiber Reactive Dyes". Although direct dye suffers from relatively poor washfastness, so it fades relatively quickly when a garment dyed with it is laundered, it can be treated with a cationic fixative afterwards that will improve the washfastness to an acceptable level. Note that the boiling temperatures required to dye polyester will shrink any cotton significantly, a problem which has to be allowed for in advance.

There are two ways to go about dyeing a garment that contains both cotton and polyester. You can use the disperse dye and the cotton dye in separate steps, washing out the excess dye from the first step before beginning on the second. To do this, you would boil the garments with disperse dye. For intense colors, you will also need to use an added carrier chemical, which smells horrible and demands truly excellent ventilation, or to be applied in a dyeing pot on top of a cooking unit that can be used outside, such as a propane burner or electric hot plate. After completing the boiling, you would wash out any unattached dye, and then you could move on to the next step, using either reactive dye or direct dye to color the cotton portion of the zipper tape and/or garment. When using two distinct steps for multi-fiber dyeing, I prefer the use of fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX, Drimarene K, or Remazol dyes, rather than the use of direct dye, because the performance of reactive dyes is very good.

Alternatively, another method is to use direct dye for the cotton, and apply it in the very same dyebath as the disperse dye for the polyester and nylon, at the same time. This is the method encouraged by Jacquard Products with their pair of dye lines, the "iDye" (direct dye for cotton and rayon) and the "iDye Poly" (for polyester, acrylic, and other synthetics). If you know the correct amounts to use, you can use any direct dye and disperse dye in the same fashion. Fiber reactive dyes are not suitable for application in the same dyebath with disperse dyes.

It's often a challenge for an artist or craftsman to find small quantities of the dyes required for this project. If you are working with larger quantities, in industry, you can order five-kilogram barrels of each dye color directly from a manufacturer such as Dystar, after first requesting small samples for your testing. If you are working with smaller quantities, you might be interested in the sources that dye artists and craftsmen use. Look at the "Europe" section of my page, Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World. The dye suppliers listed there will ship dye to other countries, and there is one well-regarded shop in the Netherlands, Zijdelings, which sells Procion MX fiber reactive dyes, and sells transfer dyes which contain disperse dye. You should describe your needs to them so that they can tell you whether or not their disperse dyes are suitable, and whether or not they also sell direct dyes. George Weil in the UK is among the suppliers who carry Jacquard Products' iDye and iDye Poly, and they also carry another line of disperse dyes, as well as needed additives, and both Procion MX dyes and Deka L direct dyes. (Jacquard's iDye Poly includes the carrier chemical additive in a separate packet inside the iDye Poly package.)

If you choose to use direct dye, including Jacquard Products' iDye, I strong recommend that you also use a cationic dye fixative aftertreatment, which makes direct dyes resistant to washing out. See my page, "Commercial Dye Fixatives" for more information. Your dye supplier should be able to provide this sort of treatment, in various brands. Depending on the regulations you must follow, you may need to specify one that is formaldehyde-free, unlike the brands available in the US, which all contain at least traces of formaldehyde.

A few warnings: note that the disperse dye might produce slightly different colors on nylon than on polyester. Proper testing is essential, before making any decisions as to what materials and methods to use. It is possible that yet a third type of dye, some suitable acid dye, will be required for your nylon; the most washfast dyes for nylon are in the acid dye class. Since nylon is sensitive to heat, it may be necessary to reduce the heat of the dyebath for dyeing the polyester to 85°C; any temperature reduction from boiling makes the dye carrier molecule even more important for reaching full color on the polyester. It may be a significant challenge to get a close enough color match between your disperse dye on polyester and your direct or reactive dye on cotton, which only trial and error can perfectly resolve. I cannot advise you on what techniques are used in industry, only on the small-scale methods used by hand dyers, which are based on the same principles.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Posted: Thursday - January 20, 2011 at 07:22 AM

Follow this blog on twitter here.
Tweet

getBlogName(); > getCategoryName("<$EntryCategoryFolder$>"); >

Looking for a way to piece-dye cotton/polyester garments with nylon zippers

> >