Name: Pam

Message: Can Slinky fabric be dyed or painted on?  If so, how?

Whether Slinky type fabric can be dyed depends on its fiber content. Check the end of the bolt; it will specify the fiber content and care instructions. I have seen Slinky type fabrics that are made of 92% acetate plus 8% spandex, but I've also seen 50% rayon/45% acetate/5% spandex. Which of these you have makes a huge difference in the dyeability of your fabric.

Rayon, also known as viscose, is a cellulose fiber that can be easily dyed at room temperature using fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. However, this dye works only on cellulose fibers and other natural fibers. It will not work on spandex, acetate, or polyester. If you dye a fabric that contains 50% rayon plus 50% synthetic fibers, only the 50% that is rayon can accept the fiber reactive dye, which means that your color intensity will be only half of what it would be if you were to dye a 100% rayon fabric. See "How to Dye Rayon".

Spandex, or Lycra®, is a heat-sensitive fiber, so blends that contain spandex cannot be dyed with hot water dyes. See "How to Dye Spandex". This means that you cannot use disperse dye to dye any spandex blend a solid color, because the only way to dye a solid color with disperse dye is via extensive boiling. 

Disperse dye is the only dye that can be used to dye synthetic fibers such as polyester, and it is by far the best dye to use for dyeing acetate. Disperse dye cannot be applied at low temperatures. See "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes ".

An alternative to boiling disperse dye is to use it to make transfer designs on paper, and then use a hot iron to transfer the design to fabric. Unfortunately, to transfer disperse dye from paper, the iron must be set on a high heat, at least the cotton setting; the care instructions for spandex clothing invariably warn against using a hot iron. You could do an inexpensive test, using disperse dye fabric crayons and a scrap piece of fabric, to see whether your fabric is damaged by the temperature required for heat-transferring dye. If the high heat does not damage your fabric, then this would be the best method to use to make designs on your Slinky fabric, because the disperse dye penetrates the fabric and leaves not even the slightest stiff or scratchy feeling on the fabric at all, unlike fabric paints.

In general, you may expect fabric paints to stick less permanently to synthetic fibers than to natural fibers, because synthetic fibers are more slippery, so that the binder in the paint has more difficulty in attaching the pigment to the fiber. However. some brands are recommended by their manufacturers for both natural and synthetic fibers. In particular, Jacquard Products advertises their fabric paints for use on synthetic fibers, in addition to natural fibers. Jacquard Products makes a wide range of fabric paints, including Dye-na-Flow, a fabric paint which flows on fabric like a dye; Lumiere, an excellent range of metallic and pearlescent fabric paints; Neopaque, an opaque fabric paint suitable for use on both light- and dark-colored fabrics; and Jacquard Textile Colors. I strongly recommend that you do some quick test designs on some scrap fabric, in order to be sure that the results are acceptable to you, before you attempt to create any large or important project using these materials.

I don't recommend the use of any paint which is not specifically labeled for use as a fabric paint. Artists' acrylics and other kinds of paint will not work as well as fabric paint. Fabric paint is much softer and sticks to fabric much more effectively. You can find fabric paints at most good crafts stores, or you can mail-order them from a retailer such as Blick Art Materials or Dharma Trading Company.

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