Name: Kate
Message: I have a beautiful navy silk top.  I think it is Indian silk (if there is such a thing) it is very light and flowy, not shiny though.  My friend, thinking she was doing me a favour, decided to machine wash it (arrhh!) so as you can imagine most of the colour has come out of it.  I want to re-dye it back to navy (or as close as).  But the dyes I have found say that you can't use them on 'dry-clean' only fabrics.  What actually happens if you dye a 'dry-clean' only fabric - do you have any suggestions to save my top? Thanks

It sounds as though the silk itself came through the washing just fine; it just had an inferior, water-soluble dye. Perhaps the silk was not dry-clean-only, and only its dye was. If you always wash it gently, and never with heavy garments at the same time, it can probably be regarded as washable, if you use washfast dyes this time. 

If you think about it, people have been wearing silk for thousands of years, but dry cleaning was not invented until the nineteenth century. Well-dyed silk fabric should be washable in cool water. However, if a fabric is not prewashed before it is sewn into a garment, shrinkage may occur which might pull the seams out of shape, and linings almost invariably shrink to a different extent than the outer portion of a garment. This apparently was not a problem for your silk top.

The easiest way to dye silk is with the use of cool water fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX or Drimarene K dyes; see "Fiber Reactive Dyes for Cotton and Silk". You probably cannot buy this dye locally, but it is easy and economical to buy it by mail order; see my list of different companies around the world that sell dyes. To fix this dye in room-temperature water, you must use soda ash, also known as sodium carbonate. (Silk can also be dyed with these same dyes with vinegar instead of silk, but in that case, steaming is required, and washfastness may be less.) The easiest way to dye any garment to a single solid color is in the washing machine; see "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?". You will also need a large quantity of ordinary salt, in order to dye in the washing machine. If you can find Dylon Machine Dye (not available here in the US), that would work well.

Alternatively, you could follow the Tie Dyeing recipe to give your top bands of different colors, or of darker and lighter colors. See "How to Dye with Fiber Reactive Dyes" .

Whatever you do, do not use all-purpose dye or High Temp dye. It is not very washfast, and works only in simmering hot water (190°F or 87°C). Tintex Low Temp Dye is fine, however.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)