Name: Danyaz
Message: Is there any way to dye white fabric 52% polyester 48% cotton a deep red or paprika color? If I can only achieve a pastel (pink) from using scarlet red tintex dye, would re-dyeing it in coffee deepen the color?

There is a way, but the expense and bother are unlikely to be worth it. The 48% cotton in your fabric can be dyed in one step with a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye, or an all-purpose dye such as Tintex Hot Water dye, but the polyester cannot be dyed with regular dyes. The result of dying only the cotton, and not the polyester, would be a color half as intense, which would be a pink color. You could then dye the polyester in your fabric with a different kind of dye.

Polyester can be dyed only with special dyes made just for synthetic fibers, known as disperse dyes. No cotton dye of any sort can produce any deep color on polyester. Typically, all of the cotton dye will wash out of the polyester, leaving the polyester its original color. 

Disperse dyes can be applied only with very high heat, the temperature of boiling water or higher; getting a deep red on your polyester fiber would require not only disperse dyes, but also a carrier chemcial such as ProChem's PRO Dye Carrier NSC or Aljo's Hi-Conc Polydeveloper. This carrier chemical compensates for the fact that boiling water is not really hot enough for efficient dyeing of polyester. Without the carrier chemical, you can achieve only pale to medium shades at best.

The greatest expense in garment dyeing polyester is probably the equipment. You will need a non-aluminum dyeing pot that is large enough for your garment to move freely. If you are planning to dye only this one garment, buying a dyeing pot is expensive. Typically it would be less expensive to just buy another garment. 

Boiling the fabric in coffee for an hour would give the polyester a light tan color, insufficient to darken the overall color effect by very much.

There is one remaining possibility, which is pigment dyeing. Pigment dyeing is not true dyeing at all; it does not involve the use of any dye. Instead, pigment dyeing is the coloring of a garment by immersing it in a fabric paint, or a combination of a colored pigment plus a binder that holds it to the garment. The great advantage of this method is that it can be done at room temperature, with no requirement for expensive equipment. Pigment dyeing produces a color which tends to wear quickly, producing the effect of instant age. It is quite difficult to get a smooth even color with pigment dyeing, but the uneven effects which are usually obtained instead are preferred in some cases.


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