More on recoloring a red jumpsuit to green

Name: Christie

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Dye polyester and poly/cotton blends

Neopaque is an opaque fabric paint, so white and light colors can cover a dark or colored background.

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Message: Hi - I wrote to you last week about my son's red jumpsuit that I'm trying to change to olive/army green. [See last week's entry, " Will color remover enable a red costume to be dyed green?".] With color remover, then bleach I was able to get the red to a brighter orange. The RIT green dye only took to the white elastic inside. Is there such a thing as an un-dyeable item? :) If you have any thoughts and can spare the time I appreciate it. I think I may have to give up on this idea.

If the Rit dye didn't take at all, not even just to make it a duller color, then chances are that the fiber content is not cotton as you had hoped. It's probably polyester. Even a cotton/poly blend should have taken some of the Rit dye.

For real clothing I don't much like Rit dye, since it fades so quickly and bleeds so badly in the laundry (I hate anything that ruins other clothing), but for a costume it ought to be just fine. It does work on cotton, assuming that the cotton has not been treated with a surface finish that makes it repel water or stains. It works best in boiling water, but ought to provide at least some color even if applied in merely hot water. (You did use very hot water, didn't you?) When Rit dye absolutely fails, as in your case, I think that the fiber content must not be cotton. Sometimes a fiber content label is wrong, though this is pretty rare.

Since the color remover and bleach did alter the color, I'm going to guess that the problem is not a stain-resistant finish. I'm pretty sure that what you have there is a polyester jumpsuit. Polyester can be dyed only with a special type of dye called disperse dye. There are other possibilities, though. A Nomex jumpsuit of the sort used by firefighters is not going to be dyeable at all, no matter what dye you use. The Tyvek sort of jumpsuit, worn in clean rooms to avoid contamination from regular clothing, is absolutely undyeable. Neither Nomex nor Tyvek will feel like cotton, though; since you thought the jumpsuit was made of cotton, polyester is more likely.

Fabric paint is often suitable for costumes. It's easier to use than polyester dye, since it doesn't require heat: you just paint it on. Not all fabric paints will work on polyester, but all of the fabric paints made by Jacquard Products will do fine, including Dye-Na-Flow and Jacquard Textile Colors. It probably won't work well on Nomex or Kevlar, but any kind of paint ought to work on Tyvek, if it's anything like the Tyvek envelopes we use, which are very easy to write on with a Sharpie pen.

Given this information, what fiber do you think the jumpsuit is made of? Do you want to try fabric paint? I can tell you how to dye polyester, but, unless you have an extremely good crafts store nearby, you'd have to mail-order the disperse dye. You can mail-order iDye Poly from Dharma Trading Company via next day delivery, so time is not the issue, but the process of applying disperse dye to polyester can be a bit of a pain. You really have to boil the jumpsuit in the dye, and the chemicals included, which are important in dyeing polyester, have a strong smell and require a great deal of ventilation.

My best guess is that this is polyester. It was bought by my Dad over 30 years ago so my brother would have a jumpsuit to work on cars with. The tag says it's Topp Master, permanent press made in Rochester, Indiana. It feels like cotton.

I wonder if the permanent press finish is causing your problems, similae to the problems posed by a stain-resistant finish. Wrinkle-free finishes are a sort of a coating on the fiber, often containing formaldehyde and other ingredients, which can prevent dyes from reaching the fiber in the fabric. This could cause any fiber to fail to dye properly. If that's the problem, then we have no ideas what your fiber is. At this point, I think your best bet is to try a fabric paint whose manufacturers say that it works on both natural and synthetic fibers.

I have two little ones at home so I would prefer a lower fume method if you could advise me. I've heard horror stories about fabric paint, so I was hesitant to even consider those, but I will try it if it's less to expose the little ones to - we're in a small townhome with not great ventilation.

Thank you for the help, I really do appreciate it.

I would not use fabric paint to recolor a nice dress a solid color, but it ought to be good enough for a pilot's costume. Some fabric paints are rough and scratchy, but the better ones only make a small change in the feel of the fabric. They're not great for getting a perfectly smooth solid color, as some areas will always end up a bit darker than others.

The most economical fabric paints for doing a large garment would be the Dharma Pigment Dyes, sold by mail-order by Dharma Trading Company. They can be diluted with a large volume of water, so they are more cost-effective than other fabric paints. They are transparent, so will have the same problems in covering up the bright orange that true dyes would have. The best fabric paints for really covering the current color and getting a completely different color would be any fabric paint that is specifically labeled as opaque, such as Jacquard's line of Neopaque fabric paints. Some of the better crafts and hobby stores carry these, or you may have to mail-order them. Dharma Trading Company is a good source for mail-ordering any fabric paint.

A bright orange is not going to be so easy to overdye (or color with transparent fabric paint) to make it olive green. If the orange is intense in color, adding green to it is only going to produce brown or even black, depending on how much green you use. I'm sorry to hear that the color did not lighten to a paler orange, which would be a lot easier to turn into olive. Opaque fabric paints may be necessary in order to obtain the color you want.

Dyeing polyester with disperse dye is something I've decided is better done outside, on a burner such as those used for crab boils or turkey frying. It would give the best results, but I am irrational afraid of using a possibly unstable set-up with small children around. There have been too many tragedies involving deep-fat turkey fryers, which are sometimes amazingly unstable and easy to knock over.

I went on the Dharma site and I think I might be able to do the poly dye. It mentions using two packages for poly - I know one would be the ipoly green - what would the other packet be of?

http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/5590684-AA.shtml - bottom of the page

Don't be misled by their instructions for cotton. You CANNOT use iDye Poly on polyester in the washing machine. You have to have the water boiling for at least fifteen minutes, preferably one hour for a dark color, and you have to see bubbles. Merely hot water absolutely does not work to dye polyester with iDye Poly. The pot you do it in has to be big enough for the boiling dye to completely cover all of your fabric.

Look at the sixth and seventh stripes from the top in my multi-fiber test strips with blue iDye Poly on this page here:
http://www.pburch.net/drupal/?q=node/1055
You can see that I only obtained a medium darkness when I left out the smelly color intensifier, and I got no color at all at less than a simmer (with bubbles visible at the sides of the pot of dye).

The thing about two packets is for dyeing a cotton/poly blend. You can mix the iDye for cotton and the iDye Poly for polyester in the same dyebath, when dyeing a cotton/poly blend. Not relevant to your situation this time.

Since your starting color is a bright orange, green dye would turn it brown, at best, not olive green.

I just received your other email - so I'm back to the paint. Can I combine two of the paints to make olive green?

If you use a transparent fabric paint, such as Jacquard Products' Dye-Na-Flow Silk Paint (which, the manufacturer says, does work on polyester), you'd want to use the brightest green you could get. If you'd been able to lighten the coverall to a paler red or orange, overdyeing that with a bright green would make olive. Unfortunately, that's not possible, since, after all the color removal you've done, you were able to obtain only a bright orange. Bright orange is hard to cover up. If you overdye it with a bright green, you will get a warm brown. If you overdye it with more green, you will get black. If you overdye it with black, you will get black. Well, of course we are no longer talking about overdyeing with a true dye, but the color effects of painting a transparent fabric paint are the same as for dye. Most fabric paints are transparent. The same is true of Dharma Pigment dyes, since they are transparent fabric paints. Transparent fabric paints are easier to use than opaque ones, since you don't have to apply as thick a layer to get good coverage, but the color options for coloring over bright colors are limited.

If you use an opaque fabric paint, such as Jacquard Products' Neopaque, you would want to mix the exact color you want to end up with. You'd start with the bright green, of course, and then either tone it down with black, or by adding small amounts of orange, until you get the desired army green.

With the Dharma Pigment Dyes fabric paint, you can dilute them considerably, and dip your garment into it. The color obtained will not be a perfect solid color; this is true of all pigment dyes and other fabric paints. The color always ends up darker in the seams and lighter in the middle. Sometimes this "pigment dyed" effect is considered very desirable.

With Neopaque, you can add only up to 25% as much water as you have paint, and the paint will be considerably thicker, just as you'd imagine would be necessary for an opaque fabric paint. You will probably want to dampen the fabric before applying the paint, for a wet-into-wet effect without hard edges. If you lay the jumpsuit down flat to paint it, you will have to flip it over to paint the other side. Keep in mind that fabric paint will stain almost anything very badly, if it touches it when it is wet, and it cannot be removed, especially after it dries. You might try hanging the jumpsuit up outside and painting it there, so that you can reach both sides and so that the inevitable drips and spatters will not ruin your household decor.

You will be able to feel the Neopaque fabric paint on the fabric after it dries, though it will be considerably softer than if you'd used house paint or artists' acrylics. The results may not be as nice as you'd want for a regular garment, but it should suffice to give the effect you want for a costume. It will certainly be much nicer than most of the vast number of cheaply made commercially-available pre-made Halloween costumes on the market.

Thank you. Any suggestions for removing any more color before I try to dye again?

Don't try bleach again. It tends to cause permanent damage to polyester, in the form of a dingy yellow color that cannot be removed. Not that the addition of a little dull yellow should be much of a problem, considering your color goals. Did you use hot water with the Rit Color Remover? Using hotter water is more effective than doing the same treatment in cooler water. However, it might not work any better than what you've tried so far. There are some dyes that simply cannot be lightened, no matter what you do.

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Posted: Thursday - October 14, 2010 at 06:38 AM

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