Dyeing a silk dress with yellowish stains

Name: Dawn

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Linda Knutson's
Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers

Country or region: Angola

Message: I am looking for an opinion on a silk dress I would like to dye. It´s just my casual wedding gown that I want to dye to wear to a charity dinner a week from Saturday. I am in Africa and have to make due with what I have on hand (several fiber reactive colors from dharma, soda ash, etc.). The dress is ivory silk chiffon and fully lined with 100% polyester. It has a few yellowish stains on the front of the skirt. I am trying to decide which color would produce the best results and least splitting, etc. What would you try if you were me? Maybe a light blue? I´m thinking that a lighter color would be better since the lining won´t dye at all probably. But I´m worried it may not cover the yellowish stains. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

That can be a real problem. Dyeing to cover up stains often doesn't work, unless you either choose a very dark color, or dye the dress in variegated colors instead of a single smooth solid color. If you dye an ivory-colored dress with yellow stains with a light blue dye, then the stains will end up greener than the rest of the dress. The ivory color of the dress itself will make the light blue turn a little bit greenish, but not as much as the stains do, so the stains will still show.

Would you be willing to try dyeing the dress in multiple colors? A very popular method of dye application for this effect is called low water immersion dyeing; the same dye you would use in a large volume of water to make a single solid color can often be used in a very small amount of water for a more interesting variation in color. You can do this with multiple colors of dye, or with a single color of dye for darker and lighter splotches. I think it'd be best to include a little bit of yellow; a little bit of yellow plus a larger amount of blue or red would work nicely in LWI, and the yellow stains would be made much less obvious. See "How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing".

Is this dress washable? You must wash the dress before dyeing it. I assume you've already done as much as you can to remove the stains, as the best approach is always to remove the stains before dyeing, if possible. Hot water works better than cold water for stain removal, except for protein-based stains like blood or milk. Prewashing is always very important before dyeing, as there may be additional stains you have not seen because they are invisible now, but which may resist the dye, resulting in obviously lighter spots.

As you know, the polyester lining will not take the fiber reactive dye. Depending on the design of the dress, this might look just fine. Keep in mind, though, that the stitching at the seams will also refuse to take the dye, because it, too, is almost always made of polyester.

Your Procion MX dyes can be used as fiber reactive dyes on silk, using soda ash; this will tend to make the texture of the silk a little softer and less stiff. This is usually fine, though. These same dyes can also be used as acid dyes, by substituting vinegar or another mild acid for the soda ash. (Do not use soda ash and vinegar at the same time, as neither will work when they are used together.) You will see less change in the texture of silk if you dye it using an acid instead of soda ash.

Note that any pre-mixed dye colors will tend to produce surprisingly different colors on silk than you would get on cotton, and the Dharma fiber reactive dyes are optimized for cotton, so the color name and color chip reflect the results you can get on cotton, not silk. This means that, while the single-color unmixed dyes will produce the expected colors, a blue mixture might end up more of a purplish blue than you expect, or more of a greenish one., depending on which dyes were used to make the mixture. (See "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?", to see which colors will stay the same on silk as on cotton.)

As a rule, you will see much less color shift on silk if you use your Procion dyes as acid dyes, substituting vinegar for the soda ash. For more information on using fiber reactive dyes as acid dyes, see "Fiber reactive dyes on protein fibers".

If you do use soda ash to dye your silk dress, using the same recipe you would use for dyeing cotton, it's a good idea, when you are done with dyeing and washing out the excess dye, to restore the pH of the silk by rinsing it in water to which you have added some vinegar. This helps to restore the feel of the silk, and it is good for protecting the silk from damage, as well. To make this final rinse, for one gallon of water, add eleven tablespoons of distilled white vinegar (which contains 5% acetic acid), or 160 ml of vinegar per four liters of water.

Good luck in dyeing your dress.

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Dyeing a silk dress with yellowish stains

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