Name: Marlene Rostami
Message: I've tried tie dying fleece scarfs royal blue, but the dye didn't take. Can you help?

It is essential to match the type of dye you use to the fiber that you are dyeing. Cotton cannot be dyed with polyester dye, polyester cannot be dyed with cotton dye, and wool cannot be dyed with either cotton dye or polyester dye. If you apply the wrong type of dye, it simply does not attach to the fiber, and washes right out.

What kind of fleece were you dyeing? Wool fleece can be dyed easily with acid dye, and cotton fleece with fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye, but polyester fleece requires disperse dye. Disperse dye requires an hour of boiling, with a special carrier additive, in a cooking pot which is never again used for food (since the dye is not food-safe); few home dyers find it to be worth the effort. Alternatively, polyester dye can be applied as an iron-on, a much easier process, using designs you create with it, yourself, on paper. See "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes".

Name: GAYLE
Message: HELLO, I HAVE A HUGE SHAG RUG THATS COTTON, I NEED TO DYE IT.BUT THERE IS NO WAY I CAN RINSE IT, IS THAT GOING TO BE A PROBLEM WITH THE DYE COMMING OFF AFTER IT DRIES? THANK YOU GAYLE

Yes, there will be a huge problem! Dye must be rinsed thoroughly after the dyeing process has been completed; otherwise, excess dye will rub off onto anything that touches the unrinsed dyed item.

Never attempt to dye anything that you cannot rinse.

You might be able to rinse a cotton rug after dyeing it if you take it outside and use a hose. How would you apply the dye, though? If you use all-purpose dye (which is not very washfast, and would be very expensive for a large project), you must submerge the cotton in very hot water, preferably 190 degrees Fahrenheit (88 degrees C.) or above, for half an hour or longer. In contrast, fiber reactive dye can be applied at room temperature, as long as it is allowed to react at or above 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees C.) for a sufficient amount of time. However, whenever you apply dye, there is some run-off. You must thoroughly saturate the cotton with the fiber reactive dye and the soda ash that is required for the cotton to bind the dye. If it is impossible to apply water without a problem, it is certainly impossible to apply dye.

Message: Is it possible to bleach polyster. I am trying to reverse tie-dye a maroon apron with bleach. Any suggestions??

No, sorry, this is not likely to work at all satisfactorily. Synthetics such as polyester not only do not reliably lose their color in response to bleach, they are often damaged irreparably by their exposure to it. Polyester often acquires an unpleasantly yellowed appearance which cannot be remedied.

Instead of attempting to chemically bleach polyester, use opaque white fabric paint to make your design. While all fabric paint will affect the feel of fabric somewhat (unlike dyes), more expensive fabric paint does so to a lesser extent. You can buy fabric paint from companies such as Dharma Trading Company and PRO Chemical & Dye (for websites and contact information, see my listing of companies that sell dyeing supplies); look for brands such as Neopaque or Jacquard Textile Colors, or ProChem's brand ProFab Textile Paints, being careful to buy only the opaque colors, as most fabric paints are transparent.

Alternatively, buy a white 100% cotton apron from Dharma Trading Company and dye it with fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX type dye.

Name: Mara
Message: I was looking for information on dying with natural dyes, but on silk. I know you can get silk scarves at Dharma Trading, and I was curious about dying with tea, coffee especially, blueberry (and any other berries), etc. (things that normally stain quite excellently), and how to fix those so they don't fade out. A lot of people's sites cover cotton, wool, linen, but not silk. One site had a lot about dying with coffee and tea, but recommended vinegar (it was the only one) and I noticed you didn't recommend that. Do I boil silk, or not? What kind of fixer do I use for these kinds of natural stain/dyes? I'm not a dyer, and the internet is such a great wasteland of incomplete information, but you seem to know a great deal about dying. Help?

Silk is easier to dye with natural dyes than cotton is, though wool may be easier still. You can use the same dyes for silk as for wool, since both are protein fibers.

The general rule in natural dyeing of silk is to simmer the (pre-mordanted) fabric, at 180 degrees F, or 82 degrees C., with a double or greater weight of dyestuff, for at least an hour; e.g., for one pound of silk, use at least two pounds of dye material. Silk requires twice as much dye as wool, for a given depth of shade. Silk should not be boiled.

For a fixative, use a mordant to pre-treat the silk. Most natural dyestuffs require that you first mordant the fabric with metal ions; alum is the one metal mordant that is not hazardous to work with. Different metals produce different colors from each natural dyestuff, but some of the commonly used metals, such as chromium which helps to make lovely colors, are extremely toxic and bad for the environment. Tea is one of the few exceptions to the rule of requiring a mordant, since its coloring matter is tannin, which can sometimes itself act as a mordant. Acid does improve the color when dyeing with fruits, but won't do anything for tea; the mordants recommend by Jill Goodwin for coffee are either alum plus cream of tartar to get browns, or iron to get greys.

Along with a great deal of other useful information on natural dyeing, there is a good recipe for using alum to pre-mordant silk in Jill Goodwin's book, A Dyer's Manual, which is available internationally for 18 pounds, postage paid, from its own website; if you order this book, take care to buy the improved 2003 second edition, as the original 1982 first edition, sometimes available from used bookstores, is dangerously skimpy on the hazards of mordants. Amazon sells used copies of the first edition for much larger sums of money, but the second edition is greatly to be preferred. Many different natural dyes are covered in this book.

Not everything that stains makes a good natural dye. For example, beets seem like the perfect red dye, but actually tend to produce a boring tan or a soft yellow. You can have a lot of fun experimenting with this, though a good guidebook will save you some pointless exercises. For information on natural dyeing, books are generally much more useful than online sources of information. If you want to purchase natural dyestuffs and mordants, one good source is Aurora Silk.

Name: diana
Message: I have purchased bedding which I would like to give an aged look. It is white 100% cotton sateen with a double appliqued sateen stripes or bands on the outer edge area. One band is a brighter lemon yellow, while the other is more golden. How would you propose I go about antiquing/aging this to tone down the bright white and yellow bands? What is the process and steps necessary?

A common answer to this question is tea-dyeing, because the light beige of the tannins in tea serve nicely to age and tone down colors. For sheets, however, an awful lot of tea would be required! You will probably prefer using synthetic dye, which is easier to use in bulk and will last through more launderings.

One possible choice would be all-purpose dye. All-purpose dye has a number of drawbacks: it is not very bright, it is not very washfast, and it tends to run onto other clothing in the same load, when you do laundry. However, you probably would be washing your sheets only with each other, and not with other laundry, and you certainly don't want a bright color. A lot of the all-purpose dye will wash out after a number of washings, but then you can always repeat the process. Dyeing in the washing machine does not allow you to reach the near-boiling temperatures required for the best performance of all-purpose dye, but that may be acceptable for your particular project. You might want to try "ecru" or a small amount of "tan" or "taupe".

As a general rule, fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, is more desirable for use on cotton, because it works extremely well at temperatures that can be reached in the washing machine, and it is far more washfast than all-purpose dye. This is the only type of dye to even consider if you want to dye cotton in brighter or darker colors, or to use room-temperature water in the dyeing process, as in tie-dyeing. Fiber reactive dye is best purchased from a company such as Pro Chemical & Dye; their premixed color "vanilla bean" #011 looks like it would probably be a good choice for your purpose, or "chino" #500N, or "ecru" #5223. Follow the washing machine dyeing instructions (check under "dye auxiliaries" for other ingredients that are called for).

Your new sheets almost certainly have a wrinkle-resistant resin finish which will limit the dye's access to the fiber. This can result in paler colors or light areas, when dyeing. Be sure to wash them in hot water with detergent (preferably Synthrapol) and soda ash, before dyeing. Washing several times may help. Old sheets are easier to dye than new ones, because some of the wrinkle-resistant finish will wear off. While it is possible to remove permanent-press finishes with muriatic acid, this is generally not worth doing.

Name: Oliva
Message: How can i dye a 50/50 blend of polyester/cotton to get high washing fastness?

If you dye 50% cotton, 50% polyester with fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, the results will be quite washfast on the cotton, resulting in nice pastel colors. The polyester will not dye at all, but the Procion MX type dye will be quite permanent on the cotton fibers if applied according to instructions (e.g., "Immersion Dyeing in the Home Washing Machine using PRO MX Reactive Dyes"). Buy the Procion MX type dye by mail-order from any of the dye suppliers listed on my "Sources for Dyeing Supplies" page; you can buy the soda ash from the same source, or from a swimming pool supply store, and the salt required for washing machine dyeing can be purchased from the grocery store.

Polyester itself is difficult and unpleasant to dye; this is not a project for the dye novice. See "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes". It is better to dye only the cotton portion of a 50% cotton/50% polyester blend, and just accept the paler colors that result from having the polyester portion of the fibers remain undyed.

Thanks for your very informative website. I am looking for info on color properties... mainly migration, how it blends with other colors. I noticed you have a couple references about fuschia. My own experience tells me that reds and that end of the spectrum migrate less, blues migrate well. I've just never seen this info written down. Do you know of information of this nature?

Actually, the properties of each dye have nothing to do with its color, so we cannot make any sweeping generalization about how reds do one thing or blues do another. One red will do one thing, while another red will do quite another.

Fuchsia, or red MX-8B, is the most reactive of all of the dichlorotriazine (MX type) dyes in common use. This means that, if the fabric is pre-treated with soda ash, or if the soda ash is mixed with the dye, red MX-8B strikes the fabric quickly, and does not spread much at all. Fuchsia's high reactivity also means that this is the fastest of all of the MX dyes to spoil, if you keep it for a week or more. (Note that fuchsia actually migrates rather quickly if the soda ash is not added until after the dye has had a chance to spread on the fabric, as in low water immersion.)

The very similar-in-color red MX-5B is much less reactive than fuchsia, and therefore tends to blend more smoothly with the other colors in direct application. It is also less difficult to manufacture correctly, judging from the fact that all of the complaints that I have seen about bad dye have referred only to red MX-8B and mixtures prepared with it.

Turquoise (turquoise MX-G or Color Index reactive blue #140) is the largest and least reactive of the MX dyes. This means that when people attempt to dye in a cold room, the turquoise will tend to react that least, and be paler than the other colors.

The rest of the MX dyes fall somewhere in between red MX-8B and turquoise MX-G in their reactivity. Other blues will react faster than turquoise and thus appear to migrate less well; other reds will react more slowly than fuchsia and thus appear to migrate better.

To observe the different properties of the individual dyes, you must use unmixed dyes. There's a list of unmixed Procion MX type dyes on my web site at http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/pureMXcolors.shtml. It is a great pity, in my opinion, that so many dyers restrict themselves to just mixing fuchsia, turquoise, and yellow, or else rely on mixtures prepared by the manufacturers or retailers, instead of getting to know the different dyes. A mixture of blueviolet (blue MX-7RX) plus grape (violet MX-2R, commonly sold under the nonsensical misnomer of violet MX-G), in low water immersion, gives entirely different results than combining similar colors that have been mixed from turquoise and fuchsia. It is good to have more options, as provided by more individual pure unmixed dye colors.

You can see the results of a couple of my experiments on dye mobility at http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/notebook/notebook1.shtml. This shows only the mobility of the dyes in the absence of soda ash, so that the speed of reaction is not involved at all. The experiment needs to be repeated in the presence of various strengths of soda ash, to show how the two factors, dye mobility and reactivity, interfere with each other. Unfortunately I am not able to do such experiments now myself. It is interesting to note that turquoise, which seems to spread so well in tie-dyeing, actually has quite poor mobility compared to other blue dyes; it is the low reactivity of turquoise that makes it appear to have high mobility in the presence of soda ash, as in tie-dyeing.

Hello. I really need to get some DYLON COLD dyes in Spain. Do you have/know any contact address that sells this products in Spain?

Dylon Cold Water dye contains a form of fiber reactive dye. You will get extremely similar results with other fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX, Cibacron F, or Drimarene K type dyes. Use sodium carbonate to fix all of these dyes, including Dylon Cold dye, if you are dyeing cotton, rayon, linen, or any other plant fiber; you can use sodium carbonate to fix these dyes on silk, as well.

It is unclear whether some or all of the Dylon Cold Water line actually contains Procion MX dyes, or instead another similar dye class such as Cibacron F or Drimarene K - Dylon's website used to say that it contains fiber reactive dye "like" Procion MX dye - but we do know that you will find that Procion MX dyes can be used in exactly the same ways, with the same recipes, as Dylon Cold Water dye. Procion MX dyes work in the coolest temperature range of all of the fiber reactive dyes dyes, 21 degrees C. or above. ("Cold water dye" cannot be used with chilled water, and must be allowed to react at 21 degrees C. or above, and actually prefers 36 degrees C.)

The only fiber reactive dye source I specifically know about in Spain is Tobasign, which sells Remazol type dyes which can be fixed chemically, at room temperature, by use of a product they call TobaFix. Tobasign ships dye and dye auxiliaries, not only within Spain, but also internationally.

However, there are other good mail-order sources of fiber reactive dyes in Europe, as well. Companies in Europe that will ship internationally include Quilt Et Textilkunst and Quilt & Art in Germany, and Zijdelings in the Netherlands, all of which sell Procion MX type dyes. See my page of Sources for Dye Supplies to get contact information for these and other dye retailers, in Europe and worldwide. The retailers listed on that page are grouped according to continent.

Name: Kelly
Message: Hi, i was wondering how to dye black nylon. i have a shirt of my boyfriends and am trying to fix it because it got super glue all over the back and will not come out so i was just going to fix the color. if you could tell me how to dye a nylon shirt that would be very helpful. Thank you

Dyeing a nylon shirt that has been damaged by superglue is probably considerably more difficult than simply dyeing a black nylon shirt. Whatever the superglue did to the nylon, it will probably prevent dye from reaching the nylon fiber, wherever it contacted the shirt. The areas touched by superglue may be protected from the dye, just like the waxed regions when dyeing a batik.

Nylon can be dyed by simmering it with acid dyes or Lanaset dyes - e.g., see ProChem's instructions for Lanaset dye - but I have no confidence that this could fix your boyfriend's shirt.

Name: Ed
Message: Dear Paula-
I purchased some materials (Dyes, synthrapol SP, dye fixer, urea, ludigol) about ten years ago of which some are unused. Has any of it gone bad or can I still use it?
Thanks.

The dye fixer, which is soda ash, will stay good indefinitely, but may absorb up to twice its weight in water from the air, which would mean that you need to measure out three times as much as you would if it were still anhydrous.

The urea is still good unless it smells badly of ammonia; urea naturally turns into ammonia given enough time, or the right microbial contamination. I believe that it's probably okay to use even when slightly contaminated with ammonia, but not if it is unpleasant to have open in front of you.

I would shake up the Synthrapol SP, and try using it only if it looks okay and does not have an odd smell.

I have no idea whether or not ludigol goes bad. It's useful to prevent reduction of the dyes during steaming or microwaving, but is not required for room temperature dyeing.

Fiber reactive dyes, however, do go bad, with time, by reacting with the moisture in the air. They can still be used as acid dyes, with vinegar or citric acid, for protein fibers such as silk or wool (as well as nylon, but no other synthetic), but if they have gone bad, they will no longer react with cotton or other plant fibers to form a permanent chemical bond. The shelf life advised by the retailers is up to one year, stored in a cool, dry place with tight lids. I personally have dyed successfully with fiber reactive dyes that are several years old, using a bit more dye to make up for any losses, but have never tried dyes as old as ten years. You may do best to save these dyes for use in acid dyeing. ProChem has a good recipe for dyeing wool with Procion MX type dyes, with the necessary heat-setting being done in a black garbage bag.

Name: Carol
Message: Is it necessary to wash new fabric before putting in the soda ash rinse? I can't find the answer to this in your FAQ's. Enjoyed your website
thanks

Fabric or clothing should always be prewashed before any steps are taken in the dyeing process. It is impossible to predict whether some obstacle, such as sizing, dirt, or oil, is on the fabric and will prevent the dye from reaching the fabric evenly, or whether you will get paler regions where the dye was unable to fully reach the fabric. Even PFD ('prepared for dyeing') fabric may be imperfectly washed, and thus should be prewashed.

Many dyers advise that you use quite harsh conditions in prescouring fabric; ProChem recommends that you prewash in hot water, at 140 degrees F (60 degrees C), with 2 grams of soda ash and 2.5 milliliters of Synthrapol per pound of fabric.

However, when dyeing clothing blanks, whose care instructions may say to hand wash in cold water, it is possible to get good results in most cases by simply washing the clothing before dyeing, at whatever temperatures the clothing will tolerate.

Beware of any garments advertised as being 'stain resistant'. Coatings that protect fabric against stains also protect it, partially, against dye, as well. There have been reports that "stain resistant finish" t-shirts dye extremely poorly.

Name: Terry
Message: I have a t-shirt which was autographed in felt-tip pen by a celebrity . How can I fix the signature so it does not bleed or wash out ?

Put it in a scrapbook, photo album, or picture frame, and never, ever wash it.

If the felt-tip pen is water-soluble ink, the best thing to do, if you want to wear it, would be to photocopy it and transfer it to an iron-on. Save the original from the laundry. Try one of these products to transfer your copy to another shirt to wear: <http://www.dharmatrading.com/transfer_products.html>

You cannot 'set' the water-soluble ink of a felt-tip pen so that it does not wash out. If you want an autograph that can be washed, you must be sure to first give your celebrity a truly permanent marker, such as a laundry pen or a fabric marker pen.

Sharpie pens (permanent markers) usually work pretty well, but are not guaranteed to never wash out. Signatures made with water-based pens usually wash right out.

Name: luke sky
Message: I would like to buy assortment of tintex fabric dyes near or in the city of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada

I don't know where you can shop for Tintex brand fabric dyes, but perhaps you might consider using another sort of dye. In Australia, the Tintex dye company sells both hot-water (all-purpose) dye and cold-water (fiber reactive) dye, but in North America it seems that only the all-purpose type of Tintex is ever available, if it is available at all.

If you are dyeing cotton or another plant fiber, you will find that all-purpose dye is a lot more trouble to use than fiber reactive dye, because, for best results, you need to immerse the fabric to be dyed in a simmering hot dyebath, with the all-purpose dye, for half an hour or longer. Most home dyers who dye plant fibers, such as cotton, prefer to dye at room temperature, which requires the use of fiber reactive dyes.

All-purpose dye is also poor in washfastness, tending to wash out a little with every laundering, often running onto other clothing in the same washing load, and it is uneconomical for most purposes, because each little box will dye only a small amount of fabric, and half of the dye will just wash out in the first rinsing, since the acid dye in it does not stick to cotton or other plant fibers, while the direct dye in the mixture will not stick to wool or other protein fibers. (Neither will stick to synthetics such as polyester.)

An excellent source of high quality dyes in Ontario, via mail order, is G & S Dye, located in Toronto; see their address and contact information. They sell Procion MX fiber reactive dye, for cotton and other plant fibers, as well as silk, and they sell acid dyes for use on animal fibers such as wool. They also sell disperse dye, which can be used to dye polyester.

Name: Gayle
Message: Hello. I make baskets from pine needles, but don't like the colors commercial (Rit) dyes allow. Too pure a color--I like more translucent. I still want the pine needle to look like a pine needle, just tinted. Any ideas?

Perhaps you should simply use a smaller quantity of dye, for more natural colors, or perhaps you need to do more rinsing after dyeing, so that no unattached dye is left, opaquely sitting on the surface of your pine needles. As far as color itself is concerned, more natural-looking colors may be obtained by adding a small amount of the opposite color - e.g., add a little red to your green, or a little orange to your blue.

All-purpose dyes such as Rit may not be your best choice. PRO Chemical & Dye recommends the use of Procion MX type dyes for dyeing basket reed - see http://www.prochemical.com/directions/MX_BasketReed.htm - which might be similar for this purpose. Fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX have the advantage of working at room temperature, instead of requiring heat for good results, as all-purpose dyes do. They must still be rinsed out after dyeing with a considerable amount of water until all unattached dye is removed.

Fiber reactive dyes are highly superior to all-purpose dyes for dyeing cotton, linen, rayon, and other cellulose fibers. You should never use all-purpose dyes for dyeing cotton clothing, because the results from fiber reactive dyes are so much better. However, since I have never used them on pine needles, I am not sure whether the differences between the two classes of dyes will be significant for your purposes.

Message: quick question:
i'm with an outdoor community summer theatre and we were thinking of doing tie dye t-shirts...we're all new at this so i just had 2 questions
1)we would like to print our shows on the back of the tshirt...woudl you recommend we do this before or after we do the tie dye adn is there any fabric that wont take to the printing?
2) our logo is a cresent moon and we thought it would be fun to have that on the front...is there any way to do this? i noticed that most of the "patterns" were symetrical width wise, though this would be symmetrical length wise
as you can see i'm absolutly brand new to this whole thing, but we all love tie dyes and it fits with out theatre so well that we really wanted to do this is we could
thanks so much!!!!!

1. You can tie-dye screen-printed t-shirts, and you can screen-print dyed t-shirts if they've been washed thoroughly to remove all excess unattached dye, using first cold and then hot water. It doesn't really matter which order you do this in.

2. You can tie a moon shape by drawing the shape of a fat crescent moon with a pencil, then gathering along the pencil line to tie it, using artificial sinew. This may take quite a bit of experimenting. See, for example, the "our tie-dye process page" at The Kind Dyes. It may help to try stitching along the outline with a long basting stitchm, gathering it up by pulling the threads, then (important!) fastening a rubber band very tightly over the threads. Alternatively, you could try stamping on a logo in opaque fabric paint, perhaps in black if that is the color of the screen printing on the back of the shirts. You can buy good fabric paint from dye suppliers such as ProChem and Dharma Trading Company.

Name: Ruvi
Message: Hello there! I have made a very common mistake..ie putting a red top in with my cream colour cord skirt! Now the skirt is slightly pink! I was hoping that you might know a way how to get the pink-ness off? Please let me know! I would really appreciate it ! Thank you very much !

This really cannot be predicted. Sometimes the product you use to try to get out the unwanted dye will affect the original color; sometimes it will not. It's usually worth the gamble, but only you can decide if this is true in this case.

Rit Color Remover is a brand of sodium hydrosulfite sold for home use. Although I generally do not recommend the use of Rit brand dye or any other all-purpose dye for use on cotton, I do strongly recommend the product Rit brand Color Remover, for salvaging garments that have been stained with dye. It often works, though there is always a small possibility of a surprising color change. (Do not use Rit Color Remover on indigo blue denim, as it tends to turn it an unattractive shade of yellow.)

Name: angie
Message: What will happen if I use a 50/50 cotton poly shirt to tie dye?

The polyester will not dye, but will remain white, while the cotton will take the dye, resulting, usually, in pastel shades. This often looks very good, so it is worth doing. It is best to buy 100% cotton shirts to dye (carefully avoiding any with a "stain resistant finish"), but if you already have a 50% cotton 50% polyester shirt, go ahead and dye it.

Beware, however, of dyeing a 50% polyester shirt red, if you are dyeing a shirt for a boy who is young enough to refuse to wear any pink. In that case, it is safest to stick to blues and greens.

Do not tie-dye with all-purpose dye; use fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX type dye.

Name: kara
Message: Hi I have been looking for directions on how to use an Tjanting tool. I am new at Batik and slowly learning . I am an art teacher in Flagstaff Arizona and I have a mixed media class next semester which starts in January 2005. I ordered some Tjanting tools from Dick Blick after I saw then in the book . I have seen similar home made tools used that look like this , but their mouths are larger.

Here is my question . How do you get the wax into the Tjanting tool and transfer it to your material without spilling it? I have purched individual lamps for the students to use in groups of two. The flame is constant . Do you shred pices of wax stick them into the whole provided by the Tjanting tool then heat and then use? I have watched a movie were a lady used what she called a birds nest with paper towels. Do you have any ideas how a whole class of thirty could batik. I have tried the was main dipping pot , lots of problems . wax dring before they got back to table paint brush not offering a thin enough line, and students pouring wax down the drain. Yes this did happen. I have purched 35 Tjanting tools hoping we could have better sucess. Thank you

I cannot advise you on how to use lamps for your students to melt the wax for their tjantings, because I was never successful in batiking that way. I am also concerned about the fumes that will be creates when paraffin is melted above the flame, as unduly high temperatures result in fumes that are bad for the lungs.

In order to find out how to use the lamps, you will have to try some one-step batik experiments yourself, using your lamps to melt the wax, applying it to fabric, dyeing, and washing out, to see whether or not it will work with your equipment. It will probably work better with thin fabric than thick, so that the wax does not have to be as hot to penetrate through the fabric.

In my experience, the wax has to melted and held at the correct temperature, which is between 225 and 240 degrees Fahrenheit, before it is ever placed into the tjanting. Note that this is *above* the temperature of boiling water, so a double boiler does not work as well for this purpose. Some people do advise the use of a double boiler, but I do not know how they get around the problem of having wax that is too cool and fails to penetrate the fabric. If wax is heated too much above the required temperature, possibly at 250 or 270 degrees Fahrenheit, it will smoke, producing lung-damaging fumes, or burst into flames which cannot be smothered with water. However, if the wax is not heated hot enough, it will not penetrate the fabric, and the batiking will be unsuccessful. A good choice would be the smaller "mini"-electric skillets, 7" across, instead of the more standard 12" across.

Pure beeswax melts at a lower temperature (120 degrees F) than paraffin (145 degrees F), which in turns melts at a lower temperature than microcrystalline (sticky) wax, a synthetic substitute for beeswax (which melts about 175 degrees F). Melting may be less of a problem if you avoid the synthetics and use mostly beeswax. Of course, beeswax is more expensive than the alternatives. Pure beeswax or its substitutes are used when no "crackle" effect is desired; they are mixed with paraffin when crackle is desired.

To get the wax into the tjanting, you dip the end of the tjanting into a container of melted wax. I was unsuccessful at batik until I acquired a thermostat-controlled electric skillet. Until then, my wax was melted when I applied it to the fabric, but it was not hot enough to penetrate adequately. I was never successful with attempting to heat wax in a tjanting. You must do the waxing of the fabric on the same table as and right next to the wax-melting skillet, as the tjanting with wax in it cools quickly. This would require a separate electric frying pan to be placed in the middle of each work table.

Even if you buy an electric tjanting, the wax still must be melted before it is placed in the tjanting - see <http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/1650-AA.shtml>.

I must say that I am petrified at the idea of a roomful of teenagers around a number of electric skillets full of melted wax. If an electric frying pan were flipped over, the potential for serious burns would be horrifying. The electric frying pans must be placed in such a way that they cannot be flipped over, even if the electric cord is tripped over. The wax must be heated hot enough for the wax to penetrate the fabric, but not allowed to get hot enough to smoke.

If you use wax pots instead of lamps, each tjanting or brush should have masking tape wrapped around one part of the handle, over and over, to make a ledge on its handle to prevent it from sliding down into the wax when it is left to heat. I can all too easily imagine an impulsive person grabbing for the tjanting or brush after it has slid down into the hot wax, thus permanantly damaging the hand very badly.

Please be careful of fumes. See ProChem's list of precautions on their How to Batik Using MX dyes page at <http://www.prochemical.com/directions/MX_Batik.htm>.

Be sure not to tell your students to use all-purpose dye. A student recently wrote to me with problems because her teacher had told her to use all-purpose dye for her batik, so the dye faded and bled from one part of the design to another. All-purpose dye requires the use of heat to become permanent on the fabric, which means that the wax would melt. It is essential to use room temperature dye, such as Procion MX type dye or other fiber reactive dye. Never attempt to batik with Rit or Tintex dyes, which are all-purposes dyes and thus unsuitable for use with wax.

Name: Sheila
Message: We have a camel winter coat that sleeve has been exposed to the sun and faded it out. Is there any way to dye the coat darker? I thought there was.

It's not very practical. Dye is transparent, so the dye on the sleeve will come out lighter than that on the rest of the coat.

Note that you cannot dye something that cannot be washed. If washing will cause shrinkage, so will dyeing. Lined garments are usually not washable because the lining shrinks more or less than the outer part of the garment, resulting in a badly misshapen garment.

If you camel's hair coat, or wool coat, is washable, you could dye it black with Lanaset dye, which would cover up the lighter sleeve, but the coat might shrink. You can buy black Lanaset dye from Pro Chemical & Dye.

Name: Lori
Message: I tried to dye pillow ticking with beet juice. The fabric was prewashed. After soaking the fabric I washed it with hot water and white vinegar to help set the color. I washed out completely. Then I tried soaking the fabric overnight, wrung it out, wraped it in a towl and then dried in the clothes dryer. It looked great but when I washed it the color came completely out again. What can I do to permantely set the new color. After coloring the fabric, it has to be washed because it smells and I don't want the stain rubbing off on the furniture. Thanks for your help.

It is a great mistake to attempt natural dyeing without first reading some good books on the subject. Most colored materials will simply wash out of fabric, as in your experience with beets on cotton. This is too temporary to even be considered dyeing. In order to dye with lasting results, you must match the dye to the fiber, and either follow the instructions given by natural dyeing experts, or do thousands of your own experiments, expecting most combinations that you try not to work. Most plant materials are naturally colored with chemicals that do not retain their color indefinitely; instead, their colors tend to turn brown, or just wash out altogether.

If you want to dye with beets, I recommend that you use wool, not cotton. Wool's properties as a protein fiber allow it to hold on to many dyes that will not stick to cotton at all. I also recommend that you premordant your wool with alum or another metal ion mordant. Read a good book on natural dyeing to learn how to do this. A third point is that it is woefully inadequate to simply soak your fiber in the dyebath. You must cook your fiber in the dye! Simmer your pre-mordanted wool for an hour in a dyebath prepared with several times more pounds of beets than you have of wool. After dyeing, use only cool water to wash your wool, not hot water which will tend to remove the dye. A fourth point is that beets are noted for giving rather disappointingly soft pale shades, not the bright red that you might expect. To obtain a good red with natural dyes, use a weed called goosegrass, or an insect dye such as cochineal, or buy some natural red dye, such as brazilwood, alkanet, bloodroot, or madder.

If you want to dye in cool water, do not use natural dyes. You can obtain only a stain that is not washfast, not a dye. For dyeing cotton in cool water, use fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX, Cibacron F, or Drimarene K dye (never all-purpose dye).

I recommend that you buy a good book on natural dyeing, such as the 2003 edition of Jill Goodwin's "A Dyer's Manual". It is important to get the second (2003) edition, rather than the 1982 first edition, as the information on safety is much improved in the more recent edition. Do not try to buy this book on Amazon, as they sell only the inferior first edition, at very high prices (over $100!); the best and cheapest source I have found for this book, even for those of us who are in the US, are its own web site, at http://www.adyersmanual.co.uk/, or a bookseller such as the David Brown Book Co.

Name: wendy
Message: i recently bought Lace Swag curtains that are ivory. My walls are white. the curtains just blend in with the walls. Yes i could paint the walls but i thought dyeing the curtains would be easier. can i do that in the washer with dye that i can purchase in the grocery store?

It all depends on the fiber content of the curtains. Cotton and nylon are both easy to dye, but polyester is very difficult to dye.

The dye that you can purchase in the grocery store works pretty well on nylon, but quite poorly on cotton. Cotton is better dyed with fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX type dye which is best obtained by mail-order from any of the dye companies listed on my Sources for Supplies page. Fiber reactive dye is actually much more economical than grocery-store dye, if you are dying more than one t-shirt.

If your curtains are made of polyester, it would be easier to paint the walls. Polyester can be dyed only with a special sort of dye called disperse dye, which requires that you boil the fabric in the dyebath for an hour with noxious chemicals.

Name: Betty
Message: I have teal 93% polyester and 3% spandex dress that I want dye Black is this possible.

No. Dyeing polyester requires boiling it in a special sort of dye for an hour, but spandex, which is a thermoelastic polyurethane, cannot survive any boiling at all.

Name: Julie
Message: Hello, Paula---
I'd like to dye a wool fat quarter that is bittersweet color with black dye to get a mottled effect. Is low water immersion appropiate?
Can I use Rit dye or should I use something else? Would Sabraset from ProChem be better? This is for the front of an all wool purse, so washing it will not be an issue. I'd prefer all little felting as possible. I have NO experience dyeing and need this project to be as simple as possible. (This is a Christmas present,)
I'm planning on beginning to dye after the holidays and have found you site to be extremely helpful and have added it to my favorites.
Thank you so much!

The low water immersion technique does seem to be just what you'd want, but you should use a recipe that is written specifically for wool.

Perhaps the best method for you would be dyeing wool at room temperature and heat-setting it in a black plastic garbage bag. Avoiding boiling would make it easier for you, and also greatly reduce the risk of felting.

Pro Chemical and Dye has a recipe for "Garbage Bag Dyeing with Wool using PRO MX Reactive Dyes ", and Eastern Michigan University has a PDF file with instructions for "Cold Batch Dyeing of Wool with Cibacron F Reactive Dyes".

Rit dye works okay when simmered with wool, because one of the two types of dye it contains is acid dye, but these two files of instructions are more reliable. I think it would be wise to follow one of them as closely as possible, and it seems that avoiding the whole heating business might be just what you might be looking for. All of the ingredients in either recipe can be purchased from Prochem.

Name: biz
Message: hi, i have a pair of navy blue 100% cotton curtains, which i wish to dye a caramel/toffee colour. Can you please suggest the easiest method of achieveing this.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
regards Biz

The problem with this project is that navy blue is a much darker color than caramel/toffee. Dye can be used to make fabric darker, never lighter.

However, 100% cotton fabrics can often be bleached to remove their color. Some dyes can be bleached, while others stay dark no matter what you do. You can use chlorine bleach or Rit brand Color Remover, in the washing machine. If you use Rit Color Remover, be sure to use as many boxes as are called for in the instructions for your size of washing machine.

(If your curtains have been dyed with indigo, the same dark blue dye used in blue jeans, it is important to avoid the use of Rit Color Remover, because this kind of dye has a special chemistry that turns an unattractive yellow color when exposed to the sodium hydrosulfite in the Rit Color Remover.)

After bleaching, if enough of the color is removed, you can use fiber reactive dye to color the fabric the desired color. Fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, is best purchased by mail-order from any of the suppliers on my Sources of Dye Supplies page. You can also use all-purpose dye, if it doesn't matter to you that the dye fades in the wash.

Name: kathy
Message: Is it safe to use RIT color remover on an item that has suffered the effects of dye transfer? Will the RIT remove the original color too?

Sometimes it's safe, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes Rit Color Remover, or any other discharging agent, will remove the original color, and sometimes it won't. There's no way to predict. Even two apparently identical garments or bolts of fabric sold by the same company, with the same catalog number and everything, may be completely different - one with dye that is removable by Rit Color Remover or bleach, the other with dye that won't come out for anything - due to changes in the fabric supplier overseas.

Generally, you should use Rit Color Remover only if the current color is unacceptable, so that it is worth the risk of removing the original color.

Name: kathryn harris
Message: Hi... I saw your web page and wonder if you could give me some advice?
I have a 100% silk dress (black). A section on the front of the dress has faded after being rubbed with water (very upsetting - it is my fav dress!). Is it possible to dye the dress with something to restore the colour. Any advice on an appropriate product and technique would be much apprecited. All the dyes I've found require boiling etc and the instructions on the dress say cold wash or dry clean only.

If water is the cause of the stain, then the dress is probably not dyeable, unless you actually wash the whole dress with water and find that it survives the experience. Generally, problems with water spots are best treated by full immersion in water. If you could get the whole dress to fade uniformly, perhaps it would be okay.

It is possible to dye silk with a cold water dye, but the texture of the fabric will be changed. It will change from a shiny, formal texture to a softer, less formal, washed texture. This is not necessarily bad, but it is different.

You can dye a silk dress in room temperature water (70 to 100 degrees water) using a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, and soda ash. The same dye can be used with silk as an acid dye, using vinegar or citric acid instead of soda ash, but then heat is required in order to get the dye to associate with the fiber. It is the high pH of the soda ash that changes the texture of the silk.

Lanaset dye can be used to dye silk at 185 degrees F.; here is the recipe: http://www.prochemical.com/directions/Sabraset_Immersion.htm. The question is whether you would rather risk the shininess of the fabric by dyeing with Procion MX type dye and soda ash, or risk whatever the hot water will do to the dress, but not risk the texture. If the dress is currently unwearable, it may be worth taking a risk. Lanaset dye is considered to include the best of all black dyes for silk and other protein fibers; black mixtures of Procion MX and other fiber reactive dyes may not prove to be black on silk, but some other color such as very dark green.

Name: Brenda
Message: How would you suggest to dye a My Size Barbie doll's hair?

I wouldn't. The heat required for dyeing might ruin the hair, making it uncombable, and dye or boiling water on the doll's face might damage it permanently. Also note that dye can be used only to darken a fiber, never lighten it, as dye is transparent; this means that your blond Barbie could become a redhead (or a greenhead), but a dark-haired doll cannot.

I do not know what your My Size Barbie doll's hair is made of; the two most likely possibilities are nylon or polyester. You MUST know the fiber content of your doll's hair (or anything else) before you attempt to dye it, as otherwise you may choose the wrong type of dye and have a total failure. Polyester is the more difficult of these two fibers to dye. To be dyed at home, polyester must be boiled for an hour with a special type of dye called 'disperse dye' plus a noxious-smelling carrier chemical. See "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes".

Nylon is easier to dye than polyester; it requires scalding hot water (cooler than boiling temperature), an acid such as vinegar, and a type of dye called 'acid dye', such as that found as part of the mixture in all-purpose dye. It might be possible to hold your doll so that the hair is submerged in the hot dyebath, without melting the doll or dyeing her face, but I would not recommend that you attempt this if a failure would be a great problem for you. All-purpose dye is sometimes used to color doll's vinyl faces during restoration, so dye spills could be quite unfortunate.

It seems to me that it would be far more practical to buy or make a wig for your doll. A variety of wigs for My Size Barbie dolls are being sold on Ebay.