Name: Simon

Message: Hello, I have a pair of trousers that are 55% polyester & 45% wool - are they possible to dye and if so what would you recommend ? many thanks, Simon

That's a difficult fiber combination to dye. Polyester dyes best when boiled extensively with disperse dye, while wool requires gentle temperature changes to prevent felting and shrinkage. There is no dye that you can use that will dye both wool and polyester. Polyester requires disperse dye, while wool requires acid dye. Neither one will affect the other fiber much.

It might be possible to dye them using Jacquard's new polyester dye, "iDye Poly", which, from their instructions, appears to need a little less heat than most other disperse dyes, in combination with their all-purpose dye "iDye". Since you're in the UK, a good source from which to mail-order these dyes in the UK would be Fibrecrafts. However, I'm afraid that you will probably be seeing some significant shrinkage of your trousers.

You would also need a very large non-aluminum cooking pot to do the dyeing in, one large enough to permit the trousers to move freely in the dye water. This gets very expensive for someone who does not do a lot of dyeing, because you are not supposed to reuse a dyepot for food ever again, once it's been used for dyeing. The amount of money you'd have to spend on a large dyepot might be enough to buy you a new pair of trousers.

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