Name: Leslie
Message: Hello, I have a question about using all-purpose dyes. We are only using black. I coach volleyball and I wanted to use this as a team building experience. Since we are just using black would it be okay to use all-purpose or would the color bleed onto their legs when we play? I know you stated that all-purpose would fade but we are again just using black and are not worried about the brightness. If we purchased fruit-of-the-loom tube socks would that also work. Thanks for you time.

The color will not bleed onto the players if all excess dye is properly washed out, after you complete the dyeing process.

If you use all-purpose dye, it will work best to simmer the garments in the dye at 190 degrees Fahrenheit (88 C.) or above, for an hour or more. In spite of some instructions you may find to the contrary, all-purpose dye works extraordinarily poorly when applied at lower temperatures. Even when applied at the optimal temperature, however, the washfastness of all-purpose dye benefits greatly from after-treatment with a product called Retayne (see Setting Dye in Purchased Fabric), which can be mail-ordered from most dye suppliers, or purchased from your local quilting supplies store.

If you would rather use lower temperatures for dyeing your clothing, it would be best to use fiber reactive dye. I would advise you to mail-order black Sabracron F dye from ProChem, as the black in this dye line is a little darker than that of the blacks in the Procion MX type line of dye. Sabracron F dye likes a slightly warmer temperature than Procion MX dye likes. Two good ways to be sure to achieve this are using warm water in the washing machine (see, for example, ProChem's Washing Machine Dyeing instructions), or leaving the socks in a black plastic garbage bag in the sun for a day, while they are still wet with soda ash and dye. Actually, both of these methods can help even Procion MX type dye create more intense shades.

Much depends on the fiber content of your socks, however. If they are acrylic, don't even try to dye them! (Acrylic requires either Disperse dye or Basic dye, neither of which is suitable for use by novices.) If they are cotton, they can be dyed by simmering in all-purpose dye or by applying fiber reactive dye at or above room temperature. If they are nylon, acid dye works best; acid dye is one of the components of all-purpose dye, or you can order pure acid dye from any good dye supplier (see Sources for Supplies). One thing that all-purpose dye does particularly well is dye both cotton and nylon at the same time. Nylon dyes better if you add some white vinegar to the dyebath (about 3 tablespoons per gallon), and both cotton and nylon require a lot of salt in dyeing them with all-purpose dye. The very best black dye for protein fibers such as silk is in the Lanaset line of dye; I'm not sure whether or not it works as well on nylon, but silk dyes usually do work well on nylon, though they don't work at all on other synthetics, nor on cotton. That's of no interest unless you were dyeing 100% nylon, however, and your socks are probably mostly either cotton or mostly acrylic.

In any case, dyeing black generally requires that you use two to four times as much dye as is called for for lighter shades. Doubling the recommended amount is never a bad idea, for dyeing black. You will find that, while a single box of all-purpose dye costs only about $2.75, this box will dye only about the equivalent of one t-shirt, or one pound of fabric. For larger quantities of material, the cost per pound of fabric is about six times more for the little boxes of all-purpose dye than for dyes purchased by mail-order from most of the good suppliers listed on my Sources for Supplies page.