Name: Lise
Message: I want to dye a heavy black karate jacket because when I washed for the first time it faded where the material creased. The jacket has 3 patches and an embroidered name. How can I protect these elements from the black dye? Can I dye it in the washing machine with Rit or should I dye it in the manner described on this web site. Thanks in advance for you help.

If a garment fades on its first washing, it is defective, and should be returned to the place from which you purchased it.

If this is impossible, you will probably find it best to use fiber reactive dye. Not only is this the best sort of dye for dyeing cotton and other cellulose materials at home, it also will leave most nylon or polyester embroidery alone, or only slightly affected. However, if you wish to be sure to prevent any effect at all on the embroidery, you could coat it with clear fabric paint, or with a special silk painter's material called gutta, or with batik wax (carefully melted at 230 degrees Fahrenheit), before dyeing. Wax must be removed by boiling, while gutta may be removed by dry-cleaning. Clear fabric paint would be permanent.

Is the jacket made of cotton? It matters a great deal what fiber a garment is made of, in choosing a dye. Dye that works well on nylon will work poorly on cotton, and vice versa, and both will do nothing to dye polyester, which requires a special type of dye called disperse dye. Wax will melt at the temperatures required for dyeing nylon, and even more so polyester, which is dyed by boiling it for an hour with the dye.

All-purpose dye such as Rit is not very washfast, with a tendency to bleed onto other garments in every washing. I recommend against the use of all-purpose dye on cotton, though it works well on nylon and on animal fibers such as wool.

For mail-order sources of fiber reactive dye, gutta, etc., see Sources for supplies.