Is it difficult to dye silk? I heard somewhere that silk doesn't readily accept dye, is this true? I have a couple of silk shirts that are grey in color and would like to dye them black. Just trying to avoid trouble. Thanks.

Silk is the easiest of all fibers to dye. It can be dyed with the same fiber reactive or direct dyes that are used to dye cotton, and it can also be dyed with acid dyes (even food coloring, which does not work at all on cotton). The very best dye for silk is Lanaset dye, with deep rich colors that won't wash out even in hot water. Procion MX dyes and the many tie-dye kits that contain them work very well on silk, too, and do not require heat, so they are far less trouble to apply than hot-water dyes.

Synthetic fibers that mimic silk are completely different, the exact opposite of silk. Polyester and acetate can be dyed only by boiling them extensively with a special polyester dye called disperse dye.

One problem is that the stitching that holds your shirts together at the seams is almost certainly made of polyester, so when you dye the silk, the seams will remain the original color. Another problem is that premixed Procion MX dye colors come out different in hue on silk than on cotton, so the results can be unpredictable. For a good true black, I recommend that you mail-order either Lanaset dye or Washfast Acid dye, because other types of dye, such as Rit dye, will often produce unexpected colors, rather than black. Dylon Permanent Black fiber reactive dye is a warm water dye, safe to use in a plastic bucket, that will also produce a good black color on silk. In Europe and Australia, look for Dylon Machine Dye, which contains the same excellent single-color black dye as is in Dylon Permanent Black, but which is not available in North America. If you want to use a cool water dye to dye silk shirts black, the dye color I recommend is PRO Chemical & Dye's Procion MX Silk Black 620.


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