Message: Hi! Your site is very informative, keep it up! I've been looking for a certain gold color for my football team's jersey but most stores don't have them. We can have it especially dyed but the minimum order is too much. So i just decided that i'll just dye the fabrics myself to save time and money. Since this is my first time to dye, I just would like to ask how i could achieve the same gold color on nylon and rayon fabrics for my football team's jersey. In your site, I read that dyes react differently on certain fabrics. Since both fabrics will be used for a jersey, their color should be the same. Which kind of dye should i use on both fabrics and could i dye them together or separately? Hope to hear from you soon!

I will assume that your rayon is viscose rayon, a cellulose-based fiber which dyes just like cotton. This is the fabric we usually call rayon in the US. (There is a different sort called rayon acetate, or just acetate, which is not dyeable at home; it is a shiny synthetic material often used in linings.)

The kind of dye that is best to use on cotton or rayon is fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX type dye. Other dyes are not very permanent to washing.

Mixed dye colors will come out differently on nylon than on rayon, but the pure colors of Procion MX type dyes will come out the same on the two fibers. If one of the pure colors that this dye comes in is the right color for you, you will be all set. You must use a completely different recipe to dye nylon with Procion MX type dye! We use soda ash to fix MX dye on cotton and rayon, but we use vinegar to fix dye on nylon or wool. You cannot use the vinegar method on cotton, and you cannot use the soda ash method on cotton or rayon.

Look at a good mail-order dye supplier such as Tie-dyed.com (or see my "Sources for Dyeing Supplies" page for other dye supply companies) to see if any of these pure unmixed single-color dyes is the color you want:
Sun Yellow (Procion yellow MX-8G)
Lemon Yellow (Procion yellow MX-4G)
Tangerine Yellow (Procion yellow MX-GR)
Golden Yellow (Procion yellow MX-3RA)
Strong Orange (Procion orange MX-2R)

I'll stop here for now. If you want more information on how to do this, write back and tell me whether your rayon is dyeable viscose rayon or undyeable acetate rayon, and whether any of these pure unmixed yellows looks like what you need.