I need to dye the tips of a 7" baby pink satin ribbon blue so the dye will be darker at the tips and fade as it goes up into the pink

Name: Cheri

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Message: I need to dye the tips of a 7" baby pink satin ribbon blue. In doing so, I am looking for the dye be darker at the tips and fade as it goes up or toward the center into the pink, leaving the pink to be the center color of the ribbon. What is the best product to use to give me this look?

There are many dyes that can give a similar effect to what you're describing, but only if the satin has been woven from a natural fiber. If your satin ribbon was woven from a synthetic fiber, then the dye requirements will be entirely different.

Many people think that "satin" is a word for the fiber content, but it's not. Satin can be woven from any fiber. See my page, "How can I dye satin or charmeuse?".

Find the fiber content of your ribbon and then get back to me. If you have not yet purchased the ribbon, avoid ribbon that is made of polyester or acetate.

Thank you so much for responding. I do have the ribbon but it can be returned. I checked and it is 100% poly. Is it at all possible to achieve the effect I am looking for or should I just return it and get another type?? I need this for Sunday so I was trying to just get a few done.

Thanks for letting me know about the fiber content of the ribbon. Even though polyester is more difficult to dye than natural fibers (or even nylon or rayon), all is not lost. If you use the right product, you should be able to achieve the effect that you want.

There are different ways you can go with this. The easiest way, by far, would be to use a very thin fabric paint, as a mimic for dye. Probably the thinnest of all of the fabric paints that will work on polyester is Jacquard Product's Dye-Na-Flow; it's a very thin paint that works like a dye, and that is said to work okay on polyester, unlike many fabric paints. (ColorHue is popular for dyeing silk ribbons, but it won't work on polyester.) I hope one of your local art supply shops carries Dye-Na-Flow, so that you don't have to wait for even a next-day online order to reach you in time to do the work for this Sunday.

If you take a blue jar of Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint, you can use some of it undiluted at the tips, then dilute some with water and paint the next part of the ribbon, dilute it further and paint the next section, etc., for a gradual lightening of the intensity of the blue color that you are using. (I hope you have at least one spare ribbon to test your technique on!) Unfortunately, you cannot continue to dilute the Dye-Na-Flow indefinitely, for a very pale color, because too much water will make the paint wear off more quickly later on, as the result of not leaving a high enough concentration of glue in the mixture, with excessive dilution. This should not be a problem if the ribbons will not be washed many times. If they do have to be able to survive much laundering, then the way to continually dilute the fabric paint in color, without diluting its strength, is to also buy a small jar of the colorless extender that Jacquard Products makes for the fabric paint, and use it along with water to dilute the blue Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint.. They use the same extender for Dye-Na-Flow as for their other paints, Lumiere and Neopaque, the Neopaque Colorless Extender, but it is thicker than Dye-Na-Flow. After the ribbons have dried, use a hot dry iron to heat-set the binder in the fabric paint.

It doesn't seem likely that you'll want to use a true dye. Polyester refuses all types of dye except for disperse dye. You can buy disperse dye easily in the form of Jacquard Products' "iDye Poly" (not to be confused with their plain iDye, which is only for natural fibers), but applying it to polyester requires boiling along with a smelly intensifier chemical (which is included in the packet of dye), and standing over that pot while gradually removing more of the ribbon from the pot, so that part of the ribbon has less exposure to the dye, sounds like an unpleasant experience to me.

I hope that you are already clear on what the color results will be. A rich blue on top of pink will be blue, certainly, perhaps with a bit of a purple tinge, but as you lighten the blue, the pink will show through more and more, creating violet. The gradient effect can be very pretty. You can't go straight from blue to pink without violet in between, unless you keep the blue very dark and avoid trying for the gradual-fading color effect (also known as the gradient or ombré effect).

If you do want to return the ribbon, see what the available alternatives are, since you don't have time to order online now (though Dharma Trading Company does do next-day shipping; their silk ribbon is all white, so you'd also have to dye the ribbon pink, but they have all the other products you might want to use.) A silk ribbon, made of real 100% silk, is extremely easy to dye with all sorts of dyes and fabric paints (and works even better with Dye-Na-Flow than polyester does); it works well even with fabric markers. Rayon ribbon is easy to dye, too, using the same Procion dyes that are used for tie-dyeing, though in a very different effect than tie-dyeing. I would advise that you sacrifice one of your polyester ribbons as a test, to see whether you can get a good result with gradual dilutions of Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint. If you don't like the result, can you return the remaining ribbons? Always buy enough extra pieces to use for testing your materials and your techniques.

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Posted: Tuesday - October 11, 2011 at 07:55 AM

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I need to dye the tips of a 7" baby pink satin ribbon blue so the dye will be darker at the tips and fade as it goes up into the pink

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