Name: Kathy

Message: I am looking for a way to dye a white print a very pale pink and keep the print intact. The fabric is 100% cotton. It is pittsburgh steeler fabric and I see on ebay a seller has a layette set in pink, but there is no  pink available anywhere. Here is a link to the item and if you can give me any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated.

This looks like an extremely easy project to do. All dye is transparent, so the original colors will show right through the dye. The original colors will be affected depending on the intensity of the concentration of the dye you use.

If you overdye any print with a pale pink dye, the white parts will all turn pink, while the darker colors will remain darker. There will be no effect on the red or black portions of the print; the royal blue portions might pink up a slight lavender tinge, but probably not enough to be noticeable. Other colors, such as yellow or pale green, would be affected drastically by adding pink dye, but not the colors in the print you're considering.

You will find that any contrasting fiber content will tend to pick the dye up more or less strongly. For example, if you dye a cotton bag that has nylon straps, the straps may stay white, or they may pick up a more intense pink, depending on what dye and what recipe you are using.  If there is elastic on the bottom of a fitted sheet, it will probably stay white when the fabric changes color.

Any dye that works on cotton will work for this project. However, I do not recommend the use of all-purpose dye if you can use fiber reactive dye, instead. Fiber reactive dye is much better. An all-purpose dye, such as Rit or Tintex, will tend to bleed when wet (though the problem will be minimal for a pale color like your choice of pink), and it will tend to fade considerably as the result of frequent washing. If you use a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye, Tulip One Stop Fashion Dye, or Dylon Permanent dye, the dye will make a permanent chemical bond to the cotton fiber, so that it will not fade or bleed. You can buy these dyes from a crafts store or from a mail-order dye supplier such as Dharma Trading Company. You can also do very well by buying a good brand of tie-dye kit (not Rit) and using just the fuchsia dye from the kit on your fabric. You will want to use only a small amount of dye, in order to get a very pale pink. If you're not sure how much to use, use less, because it is much easier to dye a second time, to get a darker color, than it is to remove the color after you have dyed it too dark.

Before using the layette set for a baby, be sure to wash out all unattached excess dye first, as there is always excess dye loose on the fabric after dyeing. To do this with fiber reactive dye, wash once in cool water without detergent, and then wash two or three times with detergent in very hot water.

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