Name: Tina
Message: hello,
I'm trying to do a project in a very low budget community program.  I want the best possible results but i'm afraid it may fail.  I must use an all purpose dye and tubs to the do the project.  I'm planning on using bottles with hot dye and was wondering if I can still have good results.  The derergent that is mentioned in your web site is not within our budget either.  Can using dish liquid work?  Any tips you have would be greatly appreciated.

All-purpose dyes are anything but economical! There is very little dye in each box, so you have to buy a numbner of boxes, at $2.99 each. The liquid all-purpose dye will color even less fabric, for an even higher cost. If, instead, you get some good fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, you will find that you spend no more money per garment, and for big projects, appreciably less money, all while getting a product that is far easier to use and produces vastly superior results, when compared to all-purpose dye. 

For a small project, get a tie-dye kit. Many crafts stores carry these kits for about $12 for a small kit, or $20 for a larger one, which contain everything you need to dye a number of shirts. The kit is certainly more valuable than the equivalent number of boxes of all-purpose dye, though the latter will generally cost more. Do not buy the tie-dye kit that contains all-purpose dye. The tie-dye kits made by Jacquard or by Rainbow Rock contain high quality Procion MX dyes in the three primary colors of turquoise, yellow, and magenta, as well as soda ash, plastic bottles, and even gloves. The Jacquard kit gives you more dye for the money than the Rainbow Rock kit does. Bulk fiber reactive dye, in two-ounce or larger jars, is far cheaper than the kits, when purchased by mail-order, even after accounting for the cost of shipping; see any of the companies listed on my "Sources for Dyeing Supplies" page.

As an alternative to the tie-dye kits, my local chain fabric store carries Dylon Permanent Fabric Dye, which contains fiber reactive dyes which will work more-or-less like Procion MX dye, using squirt bottles. Dylon Cold Water Dye is somewhat more appropriate, if you happen to see that. (Avoid Dylon Multi-Purpose Dye and Tintex Hot Water dyes, which are just other brands of all-purpose dye.)

All-purpose dye is only temporary if you apply it at room temperature in squirt bottles. It will just wash out! Do not use the squirt bottle technique with all-purpose dyes. It was designed for use only with cool water fiber reactive dyes. Boiling the dye in the water will do you no good at all if you are then going to cool it down enough to put it into plastic bottles; all-purpose dye must be HOT when it is applied to the fabric, and works best when kept that hot, on the fabric, for at least half an hour. To tie-dye with all-purpose dye, see the method detailed on "How can I tie dye with RIT dye?". You must use very hot water in the dyebath in order to encourage the all-purpose dye to form a longer lasting attachment to the fabric. It cannot attach as permanently as fiber reactive dye, and garments dyed with all-purpose dye will bleed a little in the laundry every single time they are washed, but the right kind of heat-setting will at least allow it to work as dye.

If all-purpose dye is directly applied to fabric like fiber reactive dye, it will wash out of the fabric, unless you steam the dyed fabric before you rinse the dye out at all. You can wrap the items in plastic wrap and steam them for half an hour, just like steaming vegetables, over boiling water in a lidded cooking pot. The results will not be as good as if you use fiber reactive dyes, but it will be much better than if you do not heat set the dye at all. Steaming one garment is not at all difficult to do, but steaming a large number of garments or a large amount of fabric yardage will be quite an unwieldy project.

Any detergent can work for washing out the dye afterwards. Synthrapol is a favorite of dyers, but hand washing with dishwashing liquid is just fine, as long as it contains no bleach. Some laundry detergents are less suitable because they contain "whiteners and brighteners" which will temporarily dull down dark or bright colors. This is not a problem with dishwashing liquid, though of course you must never use dishwashing liquid in a washing machine (it will foam up appallingly). Ordinary laundry detergent will work pretty well if it is all that you have.

Please be sure that your shirts, or whatever you are dyeing, are 100% natural fiber, such as cotton, linen, rayon, or silk. Do not attempt to dye polyester or acrylic with all-purpose OR fiber reactive dye, as neither type of dye will work on these synthetics.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: SHELLY
Message: I own a set of bib overalls and coveralls made of ten mile cloth.  The Bibs are solid blaze orange and the coveralls are camoufloge orange. They both have Gortex lining. I would like to dye them another color.  Is this possible and how would I go about it?

It looks as though it may not be worth the time, hazard, or expense. Apparently Ten Mile Cloth® is a brilliant orange fabric made of 100% Acrylan®, which is an acrylic fiber, with a DWR (durable water resistant) finish. To truly dye acrylic, you must obtain a special form of dye, either disperse dye, for pale shades, or basic dye, for darker shades. All-purpose dye will not work, and no form of cool water dye will work.  The instructions provided by the dye retailer indicate that you must heat the garments with the dye to boiling, and then maintain this temperature for an hour, in a non-aluminum pot large enough to allow the fabric to move freely. The largest expense comes from the fact that then you must never use the pot for food again; given the cost of such a large non-aluminum pot, you'd probably save money by just buying new clothing. 

Of course, boiling is never recommended for Gore-Tex® clothing, though I am not sure how much damage it may actually do. Typical care instructions for Gore-tex call for temperatures under 105 degrees F. (41 C.), while acrylic takes dye best above 140 degrees F. (60 C.).

It is often possible to use a kind of fabric paint called "pigment dye" (actually not a dye at all) on synthetic fibers, but paint may not stick to a fabric that has been treated with a water-repellent finish, unless you can remove it. If you can remove the water repellent finish by machine washing, then you will be able to use "pigment dye" or another form of fabric paint, even though the fiber is synthetic. The results will not be as even and smooth as those you can expect from a dye, but at least you should be able to make the garments less eye-catchingly bright, though they might not be as pretty.

For more information on dyeing acrylic fabrics, see "How to Dye Acrylic with Basic Dye". For more information on fabric paints, see "Fabric Paints: a different way to color fibers".

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Joe
Message: Hello, I really enjoy 'creating' shirts with tye dye. However, I have never figured out how to keep the colors from bleeding together when they are washed. How do you treat the garment to prevent this? 

What kind of dye are you using? The worst bleeding of colors is found in garments dyed with all-purpose dyes, because all-purpose dye never attaches very firmly to the fabric. Don't use Rit dye for tie-dyeing cotton; instead, use a good fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. Good tie-dye kits contain this kind of dye.

For the rest of this answer, I will assume that you are using a good fiber reactive dye, which will give much better results in tie-dyeing than you can get with all-purpose dye.

The amount of dye blending desired in tie-dyeing varies a great deal. If you want a rainbow effect, it's fine for adjacent colors to blend; you just need to make your bands wide enough that no more than two colors merge in one area. 

The most annoying problem in tie-dyeing is when your dark colors transfer onto light areas in the wash. The most important key to preventing this is to let the dye react long enough. If you wash out your dyes before all of the dye has had time to react, either with the fabric or with the water it's dissolved in, then dye that gets on another part of the garment and make a permanent bond to it. Once that happens, nothing can solve the problem. So the most important thing to remember is to leave your dyed items to react for 24 to 48 hours if the temperature is around 70 degrees F. (21 C.), or for 8 to 16 hours if the temperature is around 88 degrees F. (31 C.). These times should be in excess of that needed to dye the fabric, and therefore help to make sure that every last bit of the unattached excess dye has reacted and is now inert. The amount of time it takes for dye to react with the fiber is inversely related to the temperature at which the reaction occurs. If your garments are at less than 70 degrees F. for the reactive phase, wrap each one in plastic wrap, making sure that there is plastic between any regions of the garment which you do not want sharing their colors, and then bring the garments into a warmer place.

If you are allowing plenty of time for your fiber reactive dye + soda ash + cotton fiber to react, so that no active unattached dye remains, then any dye transfer that occurs should be removable in the washing-out stage. For your first washing, use cool water; then wash in the hottest water you can get, several times, using Synthrapol or another detergent. As a lazy person, I prefer to do all of this washing in the washing machine; I dump all of my freshly-dyed wet garments into the washer on cold for one run, then turn off the cold water to my washing machine (and/or turn up the water heater) for two or three washes in very hot water - the hotter, the better, unless the garment cannot tolerate this abuse.

If you have another problem, which is that the dye is spreading on your garments before you ever wash them, you should start adding a thickener to your dye. The usual thickener used in tie dyeing is sodium alginate, or alginate SH (SH refers to how thick the alginate is; use a different grade for silk). Here is a popular recipe, from Tie-dyed.com: 

Chemical Water (Dye Mix)
------------------------
For 2 cups water (= 500 ml)
Use 1 tsp. of Alginate SH (=5 ml)
Add 1/8 cup Urea (= 2 tablespoons or 30 ml)
Mix with 2 TBS. Procion MX dye powder (= 30 ml)
1 tsp. (= 5 ml) of soda ash to activate (set) the dye to the fabric.
Put in squeeze bottles and dye!

Personally, I prefer to use soda ash as a presoak instead of adding it to the dye as in the above recipe, but you can follow the above recipe without the soda ash, and use the soda ash as a presoak as usual. You might be able to buy alginate at your local crafts store, but more likely you will have to mail-order it. Almost any of the companies listed on my Sources for Dyeing Supplies page will be able to sell it to you.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Judy
Message: I am dying a chemist lab coat.  I want it to look like red and blue tie dying with some white (school colors).  Can this happen??  I have ritz die and I was going to use rubber bands and dip in a bucket???  I am having trouble visualizing the outcome.

What is your lab coat made of? If it is 100% cotton, or at least 80% cotton, it should dye well, if you get some better dye. If it contains much polyester polyester, red dye will only make pink, and blue dye will make baby blue, which would not be right at all.

Do you have Rit dye? Rit is a brand of all-purpose dye. (Ritz is the name of a hotel, a camera store, and a brand of snack crackers.) All-purpose dyes such as Rit require nearly-boiling water to make a good attachment to cotton. To get a good intense red with Rit dye, you should simmer the fabric in the hot dye bath for half an hour - this means *cook* the fabric in the dye water. This can be quite difficult to do without getting dye on the other parts of your lab coat that you want to be white or the other color. For instructions on how to do this correctly, see "How to Tie Dye with All Purpose Dye". You will have to be very careful: if you get red and blue on the same parts of the lab coat, you will get purple!

To get a good bright red and blue on cotton, do not use all-purpose dye. Use a good fiber reactive dye. This is so much easier than using all-purpose dye, because it does not require hot water at all! Warm room-temperature water will work quite well with fiber reactive dye. Your local craft store, or a fabric store such as Joann's, might carry Dylon Cold Water dye or Dylon Permanent Fabric dye, which are acceptable fiber reactive dyes. (Avoid Dylon Multi Purpose dye!) If you are very lucky, you may find Procion MX dye in your local crafts store. Iollow the directions on the package, or, if you are sure that you have fiber reactive dye, use the "How to Dye" recipe on my website. If you have a little more time, you can mail-order Procion MX dye from almost any of the different companies listed on my "Sources for Dyeing Supplies" page.

If your lab coat is more than 20% polyester, you should not even try to use dye. Use red and blue fabric paint, instead. Fabric paint is a kind of paint which is much softer and nicer on fabric than ordinary artist's paint, which is very rough, stiff, and scratchy. It is not as soft or nice as fabric dye, but you will be happier with red and blue fabric paint than with pink and baby blue fabric due.  You may be able to buy fabric paint at your local crafts or fabric store, or you can mail-order higher quality fabric paints from the same list of different companies that sell dyeing supplies.



(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Brenda

Message: I have curtains made of 40% cotton 60% silk that say on the tag Dry Clean Only. They were a solid scarlet red and have faded in parts to a peachy color from the sun. Is there any way to dye them back? 

I have called dry cleaners and upholsters and haven't any luck on finding someone who offers this service. I teach art, but have only tie dyed before with Rit [all-purpose] dye. I live in Pearland, SE Houston and go to Texas Art often. I would greatly appreciate any advice! :)

If you can't wash it, you can't dye it. No one else will dye  a dry-clean-only item for you, either. 

Sometimes you actually can wash items marked 'dry clean only'. It's a big risk, though. If you will replace the curtains if you can't dye them, then you might as well try washing them. They might shrink and/or fall apart. If they survive, you can go ahead and dye them. If they can handle being washed in cool water, but not in hot water, you should avoid all-purpose dye, and stick to a cool water fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye. However, the darker areas will still be darker after you dye them, since the dye you add on top will be transparent and allow the old color to show through. This means that a solid color will be very difficult to get, unless you use a very dark color and a huge amount of dye, but you can get very nice multicolored effects with low water immersion dyeing.

It's very rare to find anyone local who will do custom dyeing, but if your item is washable, and made of natural fibers such as your cotton/silk, you can find someone on my page of "Contact Info for Custom Dyers" to dye it for you; use e-mail to get a price quote and arrange to send the items through the mail. 

For tie-dyeing, you will get vastly better results if you buy good fiber reactive dye, instead of using all-purpose dye. Texas Art Supply sells this dye, labeled "Procion MX dye", under the Jacquard brand name. You will find better prices if you order Procion MX dye in two-ounce or larger jars by mail from any of the different companies listed on my Sources for Dyeing Supplies page, but it's nice to have a local source. It's a very good dye, much more satisfactory than all-purpose dye, because the colors are better, the dye lasts much longer in the laundry, and it is much easier to use since heat is not required for a good dye/fiber bond. Use soda ash as the fixative for Procion MX dye.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

[link updated November 29, 2007]

Name: Luke
Message: Hi there.  This may sound like a strange question but I have bought a large quantity of bone rings and was wanting to dye some of them in various colour to sell at markets.  Having the various colours would really boost the plain bone colour and I was just wondering if you could suggest how to do that.  Maybe a high temperature fabric dye would suffice but is there anything purpose built for this kind of thing?

You're right, that is an interesting question. I have never tried to dye bone.

I would guess that it is not at all difficult to do. Bone, like eggshell, is of course largely composed of calcium, with some proteins. An easy thing to try would be Easter egg dye. At this season you will not find the special Easter egg coloring kits in stores, but the food coloring available in little bottles (often in small boxed sets of four colors) on the baking aisle in the grocery store is the same kind of dye. To dye eggshells, you soak them in water mixed with vinegar and food coloring. Hotter water works better than cooler water; use less water for more intense colors.

Jacquard recommends the use of their Wood & Reed dye on bone. ("All you need is a container large enough to hold your material, hot water, and Jacquard Wood and Reed dye.") I believe that this dye is of the class called Basic dye; it should not be used in your kitchen, should not be used in any food-use container, and should be used with care to avoid any skin exposure to the dye or any breathing of the dye powder. All dyes other than food coloring should be used with similar precautions and care, of course, but I feel that it is particularly important to avoid direct exposure to basic dyes. Bone will be far easier to dye than acrylic, but the page "Dyeing Acrylic with Basic Dye" includes a discussion of this type of dye. (Here is a direct link to purchase Jacquard Wood & Reed Dye at Fiber-arts.com.)

Some very old recipes for the natural dyeing of bone and other materials appear in a historical document called the Allerley Mackel, which has been translated by Drea Leed; it says, "Any wood, bone, or horn you want to dye must lie for half a day in alum water, and then be allowed once more to dry. Then it should be dyed as follows", followed by recipes involving copper verdigris, brazilwood (an expensive natural dye), apple tree bark, or nut galls. For example: "To dye yellow: Take the bark of apple trees, scrape the outer rough skin from it, keep the middle layer and cut it into small pieces. Pour water thereon, lay the wood, bone or horn therein, also put alum therein and let it boil well together." Alum is a commonly used mordant for natural dyes, serving to attach them more permanently to the material being dyed.

All dyed items must be rinsed with cool water until no more dye comes out into the rinse water, or else coated when dry with a clear shellac or polyurethane coating, to prevent dye rub-off. Also note that you will find it very difficult to dye an item on a later occasion to exactly match an item dyed earlier; all matching items should be dyed at the same time, in the same dyebath.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Rich
Message: I have been tie-dying for years and have always used 100% cotton.  I have done sets of sheets that have come out spectacular and they were the Jersey type sheets.  Recently, I went to get those type of sheets and found that they were made of 100% Modal, a fiber from a beech tree.  How does this work with tie-dying?  If it doesn't it what do you recomend?

Use the same fiber reactive dyes and recipes that you use for cotton. Modal® will probably dye well, since it is a cellulose fiber; it is said to be a form of rayon that is less hydrophilic than cotton. The Lenzing company, which makes Modal®, says that it can be dyed like cotton. This means that it is like viscose rayon, rather than acetate rayon, which is chemically altered and cannot be dyed with cotton dyes. Modal's lower hydrophilicity may imply that it is less easily wetted than standard viscose rayon, so you might want to pre-wet it with water containing a small amount of Synthrapol, or add a few drops of Synthrapol to your soda ash pre-soak.

Rayon tends to dye more brightly than cotton, because the cellulose is more processed and therefore more easily accessed by the dye molecules. It is even more important with Modal® and other forms of rayon than with cotton to avoid all-purpose dye because the fragility of the fiber cannot withstand the heat required for best results with all-purpose dye. Expect the fiber to be extremely weak when wet. Never wash it with anything made of a heavier fabric.

The customer reviews I saw for sheets made of Modal® did not seem very favorable. Apparently it is nice and soft, but too thin to be durable, and inclined to form pills. Perhaps the more expensive modal sheets would be better than the inexpensive ones; certainly cheaper cotton jersey is much more subject to pilling than expensive cotton jersey. If you'd rather stick with cotton jersey sheets, rather than switching to Modal, they are certainly still available at other retailers, such as Lands' End.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Margo
Message: The link to Olli Niemitalo's Dye Calculator did not work. Is it still available somewhere?

Can you please tell me which page the broken link was on? There might be an error on one page that links to it, but not another. Or, it might just have been a temporary glitch. Please try again and let me know.

The Dye Mixer Applet link on my "Other sites with further instructions for dyeing" page is still working as of this writing, at least for me. It points to http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~ollinie/dye/dye.html
which automatically redirects to http://www.biochem.oulu.fi/~oniemita/dye/dyemixer/.

[Note added August 10, 2006: The addresses given above are now outdated. The permanent address for Olli Niemitalo Dye Mixer Applet is now http://iki.fi/o/dye/dyemixer .]

If the Java applet is not working for you, try installing a new Java plug-in for your web browser, or even a new web browser, such as Firefox.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Karen
Message: Do you know how to achieve a faux leather finish for sweatshirt material? I've seen it before, and would like to know how to do this myself.

My idea of a faux leather finish on sweatshirt material would require a heavy application of some sort of plastic to get the slick smooth surface effect. I suspect that's not at all what you are thinking of, however. Try the instructions provided by PRO Chemical & Dye for "The Suede Look using PRO MX Reactive Dyes". It's actually not a texture at all, but the low water immersion technique of dyeing; this produces a mottled effect, which is said to mimic the texture of suede.


Also see my much older page on low water immersion dyeing.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Mack
Message: I've read several books and looked at many web sites and haven't found yet any simple formulas for mixing colors like peach, or teal using only 3 or 4 basic mixing colors. Do you think color wheels, like Dharma sells, are useful?

Most of those color wheels are useful more for thinking about combining different colors than in mixing them up to start with, but now there is a CMY color mixing wheel which might in fact be very useful.

The two most useful guides for a beginner, in my opinion, are Rupert Gibbon & Spider's color mixing chart (which unfortunately relies on several premixed colors, but it's still a good resource), which they will mail to you if you call and ask, and which can also be seen here under ""How can I mix Procion MX dyes to get specific colors?", and Olli Niemitalo's amazing Dye Mixer Applet, which lets you experiment online with color mixing in an extremely efficient way. Note that the Dye Mixer Applet dyes also includes some color mixtures; for example, there is no single-color green or black among the Procion MX dyes, but several are listed there.

I would not choose to mix all my colors starting with just three or four primaries, although it is theoretically possible. I like to use turquoise/magenta/lemon yellow for mixing brights, but I also need a dull orange and a dark navy for mixing darker colors. I like mixing magenta with a nice bright orange to get my own good medium bright red, and I love violet MX-2R (often sold under the misnomer of violet MX-G, which is meaningless and wrong), and I feel a strong need for several different pure blues, including blue MX-G (cerulean blue). blue MX-R (medium blue), and the Cibacron F brilliant blue. And I just do not even want to consider mixing my own black, even though I do usually mix all of my other colors from the fifteen or twenty pure unmixed colors I have on hand.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Mack
Message: Would it help to put something in the washer to neutralize the soda ash and prevent color bleeding when washing out several items at once?  I use dry acid to lower the ph in my swiming pool, so I thought it might work in the wash, also.  

No, actually you don't want to neutralize the soda ash chemically. There's no need. Soda ash is a major constituent of most laundry detergents. All you need to do is rinse it out. Unlike chlorine bleach, soda ash rinses out cleanly from fabric.

Neutralizing the pH will do nothing to prevent color bleeding. If you have dyed your own clothing (or purchased high quality tie-dyes) with fiber reactive dyes, all you need to do is wash out all of the unattached dye, which is best done by washing once in cool water (to remove the soda ash and any other auxiliary chemicals), and then two or three times in very hot water.

If you purchase clothing which is not washfast, acid will not keep it from bleeding. What you need in that case is a commercial cationic dye fixative, such as Retayne or Raycafix. The positively charged particles of the dye fixative cling to the negatively charged particles of most dyes, effectively enlarging them and sticking them more firmly into the fabric. You can purchase Retayne, Raycafix and similar dye fixatives from many of the different companies listed on my Sources for Dyeing Supplies page

Here is a summary of the uses of acid in home dyeing:

• Acid is used instead of soda ash when dyeing wool, silk, and nylon. (Silk can also be dyed with soda ash.) The acid used in this case is generally a very weak acid, though. Dyers use vinegar, diluted acetic acid, citric acid, or ammonium sulfate, all of which are much weaker than the acid that you use in your swimming pool. 

• A strong acid, muriatic acid, is used when it is necessary to remove a permanent press finish (e.g., see ProChem's instructions), but since, as you probably know already, muriatic acid is quite dangerous, this is not a commonly recommended procedure for novice dyers.   

• The sodium bisulfate sold as 'dry acid' for swimming pools, which is safer and less caustic than muriatic acid, is used in 'devore' processes in which the acid burns out a cellulose fiber from a blend, such as a rayon/silk blend, leaving a pattern; see ProChem's instructions for the devoré process. Do not confuse sodium bisulfate, the acid, with sodium bisulfite, the bleach neutralizer! The mnemonic for which of these two similar-sounding chemicals is which: "bisulfATE ate my fabric".  
  

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Paulo Santos
Message: I´d like learn tie dye in t-shirt....how can I do? I am from Brazil. You to sale to my country the kit for to do them?? thanks a lot.

I myself do not sell kits, but you can order an excellent tie-dye kit from PRO Chemical & Dye, which ships to many countries around the world. Look at the two tie-dye kits at the bottom of their MX reactive dyes page. These kits include everything that you will need.

One of the kits on that page optionally includes the "Art of Tie Dye" DVD, which is very good. Another excellent DVD from which to learn how to tie dye is called "Tie Dye 101"; it is followed by an excellent set called "Advanced Tie Dye Techniques". "Tie Dye 101" and "Advanced Tie Dye Techniques" can be ordered internationally from True Tie Dye. The DVDs "Tie Dye 101" and "Advanced Tie Dye Techniques" are currently available only in English, but they might become available in Portuguese at some time in the future. You may wish to ask True Tie Dye about this.

When you select a t-shirt to dye, choose one that is 100% cotton. Do not use a polyester t-shirt, and do not use a t-shirt that has been treated to be stain-resistant. 

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Tricia

Message: I have chemical sensitivities and should avoid Chlorox.  However, I was given a very old but sturdy sofa, custom built in 1968.   The fabric is not too worn (it was from 1978).

The problem is that overall it looks to be an icky olive green.  I cannot afford to re-do it.

I took a little chlorox and water and sponged in on a piece of fabric under the cushions.
It brightened it wonderfully to a yellow, orange and a still olive, but cheerier, green.

I had to have a natural carpet cleaning company come and clean the couch to begin with as it was musky.  they also went of the part I bleached as the odor really did me in.

I cannot be around chemicals.  But this couch is so ugly.  I'd really like a way to brighten it or dye it with no-smell natural and non-toxic.   It could go darker to a royal blue or deep teal . . . but I really like sunny colors for a small apt.

I would appreciate your help.   Thanks so much for any advice.

Chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) is far more of a problem than most household chemicals, and much, much more dangerous than the fiber reactive dye I like to use. See my blog entry for October 19, 2005, "Why We Should Be Very Careful When Using Chlorine Bleach".

Dyeing upholstered furniture never works, unless you are dyeing removable slipcovers, because dye must be rinsed out extensively, to prevent it from rubbing off on anyone who touches it, ruining their clothing. 

Instead of dyeing, it is possible to use fabric paint to color upholstered furniture, but doing so generally costs just as much as getting a slipcover made. Here is a page on exactly how to do it, written by Deb Horowitz of the Scarlet Zebra: "Instructions for Painting Upholstered Furniture".

Fabric paint is typically labeled "non-toxic", though you should ideally wear gloves to avoid getting it on your hands, as with any other art material.

The least expensive option would be to learn to sew your own slipcovers, perhaps using a book such as "So Simple Slipcovers". Try your local public library to see if they have a book on how to sew slipcovers.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Hal
Message: I need to dye pom poms, which are acrylic, in hot pink and turquoise colors. Is this possible, and if so, how do I go about it?

Probably not. What colors are the pompoms to begin with, and are they washable? 

If they are white and if they can tolerate simmering in a dyebath at 150 degrees F. (65 degrees C.), you could use Disperse Dye, such as is often used for polyester. Otherwise, see How to Dye Acrylic with Basic Dye.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

My son is doing a science fair project on the difference of synthetic and natural dyes. can you give him any information on his topic? 

The biggest issue is matching the right dye to the right fiber. Many dyes work much better on wool than on cotton, and almost none of them do very well on synthetic fibers, except for nylon which dyes a lot like wool, and rayon which is much like cotton. It would be ridiculous to test your synthetic dye by using a cotton dye recipe on wool, or a wool dye on cotton, unless that is the point of your research study; using a dye intended for the wrong fiber will yield very poor rtesults. The best synthetic dyes for cottons are the fiber reactive dyes, while the best synthetic dyes for wool include the acid dyes, such as food coloring. The question your son asks should be specific about which fiber he is using, e.g. "A Comparison of Dyeing with Beet Juice and Kool Aid on Worsted Wool".

Most randomly chosen natural substances are poor dyes. If your son compares beets or berries or flowers to synthetic dyes, the synthetic dyes will come out ahead every time. However, some natural dyes are excellent. Most of these are not readily available, but must be purchased by mail order (e.g., cochineal, cutch, fustic, indigo); purchasing natural dyes always costs far more than purchasing an amount of synthetic dye that will color the same amount of fiber. My son mail-ordered some dye and mordants from Aurora Silk for his science fair project, and received them in less than a week; they seem to be a very nice company to deal with. If you don't have time for that, you will have to stick to readily-available natural dyestuffs, such as turmeric or walnut shells. Beets are a fine example of a very poor dye. This is always surprising, because the water in which beets have been cooked looks so deep and rich and dark red that it seems as though it must be a good dye. The only fiber that we found to pick up much color from being boiled in beet water was wool, and that turned a light yellowish brown, not red. Even expensive cochineal performed poorly on cotton with or without an alum mordant, though it worked wonderfully on wool, silk, and nylon. Turmeric was the only natural dye we tested that worked at all well on synthetic fibers such as polyester and acrylic, though my books on natural dyes assure me that it is not very lightfast and tends to fade; it can be expected to fade long before a good synthetic dye would do.

In using natural dyes, it is important to use plenty of dyestuff. My son used a pound of beets to lightly dye two small swatches of fabric. In most cases, you should use an equal weight of dyestuff to fabric, or even twice as much. There are exceptions, however. Cochineal and turmeric require only a small spoonful of dye for a piece of fabric, similar to synthetic dyes. 

Most natural dyes require a mordant; popular synthetic dyes do not. The safest mordant is alum (aluminum potassium sulfate); you can sometimes find it at a nearby pharmacy, but if not you can purchase it from a dye supply company. You can apply it by boiling the fabric in the alum water, then rinsing it in cool water, and finally boiling the fabric in the dyebath. Most dyes, including natural dyes, require boiling the fabric in the dyebath; only fiber reactive dyes work well in room temperature water. Artificial food coloring is a good dye for wool, if you boil the wool in it, but it does very poorly on cotton. A nice science fair project would be to compare the performance of Kool Aid as a dye on cotton to its performance on wool. The food coloring, since it is an acid dye, will mostly wash out of the cotton, but will dye the wool nicely.

Your son will need to get books to use as references. A good book on natural dyeing is invaluable for learning how to apply natural dyes. Check the public library for any books on the subject of dyes and dyeing. See if books can be ordered from another branch of your library system. Look in particular for "Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers", by Linda Knutson, if possible. Your son may also use my website as one of his references. Note that the creation date for each page on my site is given at the bottom.

Finally, there is the question of quantifying your data. My son's school requires that the test results be digitized and graphed. How are you going to turn your dye results to numbers? What my son did was scan the swatches onto the computer, then use Adobe Photoshop Elements, under 'Histogram', to determine the luminosity on a scale of 1 to 255. He converted this value to a value for intensity by subtracting it from 256, and was able to prepare graphs of his results this way, for a project comparing the performance of Procion MX dye on cotton at various pH levels.  I am not sure how reliable this method is for scientific purposes, but the numbers corresponded very well to our visual observations.

Please see the following for more information:
About Dyes
About Natural Dyes
Books and Videos on Hand Dyeing
Sources for Dyeing Supplies
Natural Dyes Are Not Superior to Commercial Dyes (science fair question)
Aren't natural dyes safer than synthetic dyes?
Is there a natural way to set natural dyes?
A Science Fair Project Regarding Dyeing Using Different Waters
How can I set the dye from pounding flowers onto cloth?


(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Guy
Message: I am buying a pair of wool pants for my son for x-mas.  The only colour this garment comes in is dark green (he doesn't like the colour) but likes the army pant look. He is wondering if he can dye the pant black. The supplier indicated this would not be a good idea so I am looking towards people in the know (yourself). Can you tell me if you think the dye would work and if so, can you suggest how to go about doing this task (including the proper dye to purchase). Thank you so much for your time.

Since you are buying the pants new, it really would be best to buy black ones, if you can find an appropriate pair anywhere. There is always a possibility of failure when dyeing clothing that is not being sold PFD (prepared for dyeing). Sometimes the fabric has been treated with a stain-resistant, pill-resistant, or wrinkle-resistant coating that will repel dye and cause it to take dye unevenly. Sometimes different bolts of fabric have been used which match perfectly in color when purchased, but which will dye to completely different degrees of darkness due to variations in the fabric. The biggest problem by far is that wool takes dye best in a hot dyebath, but, as you must know, wool has a marked tendency to shrink dramatically when exposed to heat. In addition, sudden temperature changes or excessive agitation can cause felting.

Also note that nothing can be dyed if it is not washable. Dyeing always involves a lot of washing. If the pants are dry-clean-only, please do not consider dyeing them.

Wool is usually dyed with plenty of hot water and an acid dye. You can mail-order good acid dye in Canada from G&S Dye in Toronto, or Maiwa Handprints in Vancouver, or you can use locally-purchased all-purpose dye for the acid dye that is in the mixture, though the results of all-purpose dye are less predictable. The best way to get a solid color is in the washing machine. I really can't imagine that a hot water wash will leave the pants anywhere near their original size, though; they are likely to end up several sizes too small. I would hate to dye new wool pants.

There is a recipe available at Eastern Michigan University (PDF file) that calls for dyeing wool by painting fiber reactive dye on and then letting it rest in plastic for a day or two, without heating. This has the marked advantage of not requiring heat that would shrink the wool. However, this method will not result in a smooth even color; it is best for multicolored or camoflage effects.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Malkie
Message: What an amazing site!

I have done search through your site, and have not seen this question: I have 100% cotton clothing that was once black, and is now heavily faded. I would like to use colored dyes (blue, purple) over the faded black to jazz the clothing back up. I'm not trying to make them black again-- I'm just going for an interesting & wearable effect. Will this work, or am I wasting good dye? 

I think the effect can be very nice. Where the clothing is still black, all you will see is the original black, but where it is lighter, the bright colors will show through. The result is much more subtle than dyeing white clothing for a single color all over. It works particularly well on denim, since the dyes usually used on denim are applied in such as way as to really show wear. It won't work as well if there are no very light, nearly white, areas on the clothing; in that case, the result might be too subtle. 

If you want to do several garments the same color, the washing machine would be easiest, but if you want each garment to be a different color, you could do each in a separate bucket, or use the squirt-bottle tie-dye technique without tying.

Since the clothing is cotton and well-worn, it should dye very nicely. As you will already know if you've spent time on my web site, I recommend that you use fiber reactive dye and soda ash for dyeing cotton. It's easier and much more permanent than all-purpose dye, and also costs less per pound of clothing to be dyed. I don't know of a retail source in Israel for fiber reactive dyes, but if you can't find one, most of the European dye supply retailers on my list of Sources for Supplies will ship internationally. Dylon Cold Water dye and Dylon Machine Dye are also fiber reactive dye, but avoid Dylon Multi Purpose dye, since it is an all-purpose dye.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Neil
Message: I'm a Mister Mom....I washed two yellow bath towels, and washcloths- both 100% Cotton in with a plaid red tablecloth by mistake. The yellow towels and washcloths now have a tint of red blotches on them. Can I dye them back to yellow, how?

You cannot cover up a darker color with dye, so dyeing the towels yellow will not, by itself, help at all. What you need to do is remove the dye.

Step one is simply to wash the towels in the hottest water possible, with a colorsafe oxygen bleach.

If that fails, then you should use either chlorine bleach or color remover. I prefer Rit Color Remover rather than bleach, because it is less damaging. You will need several boxes of color remover for a large washing machine load. Note that bleach is for use on cotton only; you should not attempt to use bleach or color remover if the towels contain any polyester. If they contain some nylon, you can use color remover, but not bleach. Bleach will destroy synthetic fibers.

Either chlorine bleach or color remover might remove the original yellow. It is impossible to predict whether or not the original yellow will remain. If the original dye has faded along with the red blotches, you may choose to re-dye them the original color, or another color.

The best dye for cotton is fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. You will get much better results if you mail order some fiber reactive dye than if you use the all-purpose dye commonly available in stores. All-purpose dye tends to bleed in the laundry indefinitely. See my list of different companies around the world that sell dyes. The easiest way to dye towels or anything else a solid color is in the washing machine; see "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?".

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Name: Deanna
Message: Can you tell me what dye would be safe to use to do crib bedding?

The safest dye for dyeing cotton for babies, or for people with sensitive skin, is called fiber reactive dye. The molecules of this dye actually bond permanently to the fibers in the cotton, so that the dye does not come loose from the fabric and get into the skin of the wearer. 

The most popular type of fiber reactive dye is called Procion MX. Other good types include Cibacron F and Drimarene K dyes. You can buy Procion MX dye by mail-order from any of the companies listed on my Sources for Dyeing Supplies page, or just click on the picture of the dye jars to the right for a direct link to an excellent source. Be careful to never breathe in any type of dye powder when you are measuring it out. 

You should carefully follow instructions for using Procion MX or other fiber reactive dyes. Use 100% cotton fabric for best results, or 50% cotton/50% polyester for pastel colors. Do not attempt to dye fabric that has been treated to be stain-resistant. Soda ash is used to fix the dye to the fabric, and the dye should be allowed to react with the fabric overnight at 70 degrees F. (21 C); if your room is warmer, you can allow it to react for less time. Dyeing solid colors with fiber reactive dye in the washing machine takes only an hour or so. After dyeing has been completed, you should wash the bedding once in cool water without detergent, and then two or three times in very hot water with detergent. (See "How to Dye".)

The way to test whether all unattached dye has been washed out is to dampen the dyed fabric and iron it dry against some white cotton fabric. If no dye transfer occurs, you have washed out all excess dye. If dye does transfer, you should soak in hot water and wash again.

I do not especially like the idea of all-purpose dye, because it is not permanent the way fiber reactive dye is. You can never wash out every bit of unattached dye, if you use all-purpose dye, and it always bleeds in the laundry. However, I have seen no evidence that there is any harm in using all-purpose dye for baby clothing and bedding, as long as it is washed well before use.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)