How should I dye some 50% cotton/50% polyester sheets?

Name: Ann

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Linda Knutson's
Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers

Message: I have an elementary question for you....... I need to dye some 50/50% cotton polyester blend sheets a medium shade of caramel. I read your Q&A's on polyester dyeing but I'm still in a quandary as to how to do the project. I had planned to use my top load washing machine but discovered that poly requires immersion dyeing. I could really use your help!

Thanks so much for your kind attention and your wonderfully informative website!

What I would do is dye only the cotton portion of the sheets, using Procion MX fiber reactive dye in the washing machine. (You'll also need soda ash or washing soda, a large quantity of ordinary non-iodized salt, and water softener chemical.) The cotton in the blend will pick up the Procion dye and bond to it permanently, while the polyester blended with it will remain white after washing. This generally works fine, as long as you don't mind getting somewhat muted colors. It's no good at all for getting a rich deep black or a brilliant scarlet, but it's okay for subtler effects.

Dyeing the polyester would be far more trouble than it's worth, since it would require buying a cooking pot huge enough for the sheets to move around in freely as you boil them with the special polyester dye. It would be a significant investment, since you shouldn't plan on reusing a dyeing pot for food. In addition, the experience of boiling the smelly intensifier chemical along with the dye is no fun. It'd make more sense (and cost less) to buy new cotton sheets to dye than to buy an expensive huge cooking pot to dye cotton/poly blend sheets.

You can't get a really dark color when you're dyeing only 50% of the fiber content, but fortunately you're only trying for a medium-intensity hue. The color will be blander than you would get when dyeing 100% cotton or rayon, but it should meet your needs.

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Posted: Thursday - October 13, 2011 at 09:50 AM

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How should I dye some 50% cotton/50% polyester sheets?

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