Archives for November, 2008

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Sunday, November 30, 2008

What dye should I use to tie-dye a Tactel/spandex blend?

Name: Maria

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Fabric paint

Message: I dye my fabric doing tye dye. My fabric is 90% Tactel nylon/10% spandex. What kind of dye is the right for me to use?

There might be a problem with your Tactel nylon blend. Most nylons have some sort of surface finish that will tend to repel any dye or fabric paint you use on it. Teflon finishes and "moisture-wicking" finishes are not uncommon on Tactel.

If your nylon blend does not have any such surface finishes, then I recommend that you use a high-quality thin fabric paint, instead of dye, to tie dye the fabric. This is because nylon requires heat in order to dye, but spandex is easily damaged by heat and must be washed in cool water only.

Good brands of fabric paint for tie-dyeing include Dharma Pigment Dyes, sold by mail by Dharma Trading Company, and Dye-na-Flow, which is produced by Jacquard Products. I don't recommend that you try a thicker fabric paint, nor any paint which is not specifically labeled for use on fabrics. Dharma Pigment Dye is probably the best choice, because it does not require heat-setting on nylon. You can add a small amount of a product called Jacquard Airfix (which you can order from Jerry's Artarama (one of the few mail-order sources for AirFix) to Dye-na-Flow instead of heat setting, however, if you like.

If you choose to use dye instead of fabric paint, you will have to use acid dyes, and compromise between the nylon's need to be heated when dyed, and the spandex's need to avoid all heat. You may find success with a compromise of between 120°F and 140°F, but you should expect the dye to be less permanent than if you use the recommended temperature of 185°F for dyeing nylon. Spandex may lose its shape over 105°F.

There are many different kinds of acid dye available. For nylon, I most recommend Lanaset dyes or WashFast Acid dyes. You will almost certainly not be able to buy these dyes locally, but instead will have to mail-order them. If you have a very good crafts store near by, you might be able to find Dye-na-Flow fabric paint, but in many locations that, too, will need to be mail-ordered.

If you have problems in dyeing your fabrics, then you will want to look at a supplier of PFD or PFP fabric. Good sources for PFD fabric include Test Fabrics, Silk Connection, and Dharma Trading Company. PFD and PFP fabrics are much more reliable for dyeing purposes because they lack finishes that interfere with dyeing.

Also see:
"How can I dye nylon?" and "How can I dye spandex?".

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Saturday, November 29, 2008

How can I fix the dye in floss after I have already embroidered with it?

Name: Grace

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Retayne

Retayne sets all-purpose dyes, such as Rit. It will not work on indigo denim.

Rit Dye Fixative

Rit Dye Fixative is very similar to Retayne.

Message: I am embroidering on a waffle weave undershirt popular with the apre ski wearers and wanted to contact you daughter regarding fixing the colours AFTER I embroidered the item. In my limited experience, it did not occur to me that the colours would run when washed, and I know the recipient is not a careful laundress. Can I 'fix' the colours in a cold water bath with some additive before I commit the item to avoid disappointment after the first wash?

The first thing you need to do is test whether the dye in your embroidery floss is washfast or not. Take some of the floss from the same skein and dampen it, then place it between two white cotton cloths (if the material you are embroidering is cotton). Using a hot iron, press until the floss is dry. If no dye transfers from the floss to the cotton fabric, then you have no problem.

If, however, the dye does run significantly in this test, then you may have a problem. One option is to mark the item "dry clean only" because water-soluble dyes do not bleed as much in dry cleaner's solvent. That's not very practical for cotton underclothing. Another option is to wash the floss in hot water before using it, until no more dye transfer occurs. It is too late, in your case, to use this option.

It is best to fix the dye in floss before using it. You can do this by immersing the floss in hot water with a cationic dye fixative called "Retayne", which you can mail-order from a dye supplier, such as Dharma Trading Company or PRO Chemical & Dye. (See my page on "Commercial Dye Fixatives".) The company that makes Rit dyes has recently introduced their own version of this product, which they label "Rit Dye Fixative". Unfortunately, I have not yet seen it in stores. You can mail-order it directly through the Rit Dye website or through Amazon.

You cannot set the dye in embroidery floss by using salt or vinegar. Both of these are based on old wives' tales, and do not work after dyeing is complete. Salt is useful during the dyeing process, depending on the method being used, but it is of no use after the dyeing process is complete. Vinegar is useful when dyeing wool or nylon, but it is of no use in dyeing cotton, and it does not work as an after-treatment. See my page, "Is there any way to "set" dye in purchased clothing or fabric?".

Unfortunately, you cannot use Retayne or Rit Dye Fixative to set the dye in floss if you have already used the floss in embroidery. These dye fixatives are applied in HOT water. To apply them, you must immerse the dyed material in a gallon or more of water, at a temperature of 140°F or higher, and soak for half an hour. (I have not yet seen the instructions for Rit Dye Fixative, but they are probably very similar to those for Retayne and Dharma Dye Fixative, another brand of this type of fixative.) Obviously, if you have a problem with floss whose dye will run onto fabric, you will not be able to immerse it in hot water long enough to use the dye fixative. The dye may bleed as soon as you immerse it in the bath of dye fixative.

If you have used floss that runs badly as soon as you immerse it in water, there is only one option left to try. You can buy a colorless transparent extender for fabric paint. This is essentially fabric paint without the pigment added. IF you carefully paint enough colorless fabric paint binder on to all of your embroidery floss, this will probably prevent problems with dye bleeding. You must pay close attention to the manufacturer's instructions, and heat set the binder with an iron if instructed to do so. There are several different brands of colorless fabric paint extender that could be used for this purpose. Jacquard Products sells an Extender for their Neopaque line of fabric paints. You probably will not be able to find it in your local crafts store, but you can mail-order it from Mister Art or Dharma Trading Company.

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Friday, November 28, 2008

black polyester dye persists in bleeding

Name: Marc

Message: I hope you can help. We sell a product that is made of Charmeuse stretch satin. It is represented to be run proof, however, several customers are complaining that the black dye in the product is "bleeding" on other fabric. Our local manufacturer believes it is caused by customers using lotions or moisturizers before using our product. We had this problem with another brand of stretch satin fabric, too. It is ruining our business. How do we locate a run proof fabric, that still has the comfortable qualities of the Charmeuse that our customers love? Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated? P.S. Our manufacturer has tried multiple washings of the fabric and applying dye fixatives before assembly, but they still bleed!

Is the charmeuse made of silk or polyester?

It is a polyester Charmeuse stretch satin.

Can you choose a completely different fabric? Silk charmeuse can be dyed much more easily than polyester charmeuse. There are so many different dye choices for silk, but only one class of dye that will work on polyester. Polyester can be dyed only with a type of dye called disperse dye, which is dispersed into the fiber with heat; the dye does not bond directly to the polyester fiber and may disperse back out under certain circumstances. In contrast, silk can be dyed with any of several different classes of dye, including fiber reactive dyes which form a permanent bond to the silk fiber.

Silk is washable if it is pre-washed before it is sewn together. Here is a link to one source for a stretch silk charmeuse. Since it contains a blend of silk and lycra, I recommend the use of fiber reactive dye.

I think that it is necessary to assume that most of your female customers will put lotions on their faces before going to bed, and that many of the male customers will have oily faces and will therefore have a similar problem.

Black dyes is always going to represent much more of a problem than other colors, because a much larger quantity of dye must be used per unit of fabric. If you were to use the same fabric that you are using now but in a light beige or other pale pastel color, it would probably not cause nearly as much trouble. Unfortunately, it will show dirt more, but if the product is fully washable this should not be a huge problem.

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Thursday, November 27, 2008

My dry-clean-only coat is winter white but has some coffee stains on it that won't come out

Name: Erin

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Message: My coat is winter white but has some coffee stains on it that won't come out. It is dry clean only and the blend is 42% cotton, 37% acrylic, 11% wool and 10% polyester; the lining is 100% polyester. I did check the FAQ's, and from that I understand that dyeing the coat could shrink the lining. You also mentioned that something that cannot be washed cannot be dyed. It's a perfectly good coat, but the stains are very obvious and I don't want to have to spend money on a new coat. Is there ANYTHING at all I can do? Thank you in advance for your advice.

If the coat is ruined and unwearable, you may as well try washing it. Some clothing that is marked "dry clean only" will survive washing in the washing machine on delicate, though others will be ruined.

Washing will remove many stains that dry cleaning will not. This might solve your problem right there—if your coat survives the washing. If the lining to your coat shrinks, look at it closely and decide whether you might be able to cut it out and still wear the coat. Stain removal methods that are water-based are chemically different from dry-cleaning stain removers, so it's worth trying again to remove the stain.

After washing the coat, if it has survived, then you can consider dyeing it. Unfortunately, the fiber combination in your coat is not designed for easy dyeing. Cotton can be dyed with either fiber reactive dyes (like Procion dye) or direct dye (which is found in all-purpose dye mixtures). Wool can be dyed with acid dyes (including those found in all-purpose dyes). However, acetate and polyester cannot be dyed with either of these dyes; polyester in particular can be dyed only with disperse dyes, which require extended boiling. I doubt you have a cooking pot large enough to immerse your coat in, while allowing it to move freely enough to get a solid color on the coat. Dyeing this coat would be an incredible pain.

Probably the best answer is to apply some sort of design to your coat using fabric paint, instead of dye. You might be able to do this even without washing the coat first, if it does not have any sort of water-resistant finish. Don't try to get a single smooth solid color with fabric paint; you won't succeed. Instead, paint or print a repeating design onto your coat. Use a high quality fabric paint, not house paint or artists' colors, because fabric paint is relatively soft and smooth, while other kinds of paint are stiff and scratchy. A good brand of thin fabric paint that will not affect the softness of the fabric much is Dye-na-Flow. You could buy or make a stamp in the shape of a leaf, say, and brush fabric paint onto the stamp, apply it to the coat, and repeat. There are many different colors that you can choose, since your coat is white. Consider whether a metallic fabric paint, such as Lumiere, would look nice, probably only as a highlight for a solid color of fabric paint.

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

What's a good kind of dye for air-brushing t-shirts?

What's a good type of dye? I was planning on doing air-brushing on a t-shirt of mine. I have the air-brush but I was wondering what is a good type of dye that won't wash off if I wash the t-shirt.

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The most effective kind of dye to use for airbrushing a 100% cotton t-shirt is a cool water fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. This is the kind of dye found in all the good tie-dye kits; it is much better for airbrushing than hot-water dyes such as Rit.

Procion MX dye must be fixed with soda ash. One easy way to do this is to presoak the shirt in soda ash dissolved in water, then wring out the excess moisture and spray dye directly on the shirt. The dye need only be dissolved in water to use in the airbrush. Follow the same recipe as used for tie-dyeing, but filter your dye mixtures before use, since undissolved particles might cause clogging.

For a 50% polyester t-shirt, don't use dye. The colors come out only half as intense on 50% polyester 50% cotton, so the results are not very good. Instead, you can air-brush with a good thin fabric paint. A good choice is Dye-na-Flow, by Jacquard Products. Dilute it with up to 25% water before use. Fabric paint feels softer than other paints, and can stick to the fabric better. Paint that is not marketed specifically for use on fabric will make the fabric feel scratchy.

In either case, be very careful not to let any of the airborne dye or paint get loose. Spray outside or in a spraying booth, and wear a properly-fitted respirator. Inhaled dye particles can cause allergies to dye, with subsequent asthma if the same dye continues to be used. Inhaled paint of any sort can gum up your lungs and cause emphysema. Please be careful. Squirting dye onto t-shirts from plastic squeeze bottles is safer than air-brushing. There's nothing else that gives the same effects as air-brushing, though.

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[This answer was first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on October 20, 2008.]

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

dyeing self-striping yarns by using a knitting machine

Name: Anne

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Lanaset dyes produce
a rich long-lasting colors on wool, silk, and nylon

(For silk, wool, angora,
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Washfast Acid dyes
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Washfast Acid dyes

Buy Jacquard Acid Dyes from MisterArt.com
The world's largest online discount art & craft supply store!

Jacquard Acid Dyes are concentrated, powdered, hot water dyes that produce the most vibrant possible results on protein fibers including mohair, silk, wool, cashmere, alpaca, feathers, and most nylons.

Message: I have heard of a method for knitting (pure wool) swatches (I got to your wonderful site via your mother), then somehow painting dye on them, unwinding the swatch and then reknitting so you can knit a 2 coloured fabric which has one or both colours a bit like multicoloured sock yarn. How would you do this? Many thanks for your marvellous information on your site.

Self-striping yarn is a really neat idea. In the original concept, you re-skein your yarn into very long loops for dyeing. To find out how long your loops should be, you knit a few rows similar to those you'll have in your finished garment, then unravel and measure how many inches of yard are required for each row. For example, if you want to dye yarn for striped socks, and if each row in the sock pattern requires 32 inches of yarn, you will need 32 inches of each row of each color. You could have an enormous skein that is 640 yards long (or 18 yards), dyeing 160 inches of yarn in each of four colors in order to get five-row-wide stripes.

Dyeing a 18 yard loop of yarn is obviously a cumbersome process for a beginner, though. How much easier it would be to work with machine-knitted rectangles of yarn, and then paint the dye onto the yarn! Again you must start by deciding how many inches of yarn will be required for each row, in your finished garment. In your knitted-to-dye swatches, make each row some even multiple of this length, either the same length, or exactly half of it or double it, if possible, to simplify matters.

I particularly like the effect when the final garment is knitted from two sets of yarn, either one solid color and one self-striping, or two different self-striping yarns, especially if, instead of striping, a continuous gradation is used.

Nancy Roberts has a site called "Machine Knitting to Dye For". Unfortunately, she does not have a book or video on how to do it, but she teaches classes and sells kits for you to learn her technique. You should certainly look at her site to get some ideas of interesting possibilities. Her gallery has some wonderful pieces.

To dye your wool yarn swatches, you have a wide choice of different kinds of acid dyes. Since you are in Australia, you will probably want to mail-order your dyes from either Batik Oetoro or KraftKolour, unless you have a particularly well-equipped local shop. Some Australians prefer to order from US companies such as Dharma Trading Company or PRO Chemical and Dye, because the prices are so much lower, for some dyes, that even after adding in the cost of shipping they find this more economical; however, this requires ordering by phone, not via web site, in order to request the slowest and cheapest form of shipping, as the fastest shipping is prohibitively expensive.

For dye-painting your knitted swatches, you want to get a dye for which you can find instructions for rainbow dyeing or dye painting, as opposed to immersion dyeing. Batik Oetoro has a recipe for "Cold Pad Batch Technique" for their acid dyes, though I think you'd get better colors with more heat. PRO Chemical & Dye (in the US) has instructions for rainbow dyeing with their acid dyes, very similar to their instructions for hand-painting wool with the same dyes, and rainbow dyeing with Lanaset dyes, which are the most wash-resistant of dyes for wool. You can buy Lanaset dyes in Austalia from KraftKolour.

Here is a link to a discussion on the Dye Forum about dyeing self-striping yarn. One of the posts I made there includes links to a number of online tutorials.

If you ever want to dye different fibers, you will need to use entirely different types of dyes. Cotton, linen, and rayon are best dyed with fiber reactive dyes, such as the Procion MX dyes popular for use in tie-dyeing, while acrylic must be dyed with either disperse dyes or basic dyes. As long as you are dyeing wool, you will want to use acid dyes of one sort or another. The Lanaset dyes are some of the best.

I would be happy to walk you through more details on how to dye-paint your wool for specific effects, if you like.

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Monday, November 24, 2008

Where in Brazil can I buy Procion MX or equally good dyes?

Name: Sergio

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Dylon Permanent Dye
mostly Drimarene K dyes

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Message: Good afternoon! My name is Sergio and I would like to know if here in Brazil I can find the paint PROCION MX or any other that is as good as her. I'm currently using the DRIMAREN, but I am keen to use the same paint you. Thank you for your attention, I am a great admirer of the work for you.

Hello Sergio,

I don't know of a source for Procion MX dyes in Brazil, but I am happy to learn that you are using Drimarene dye. (Can you please tell me where you are buying the Drimaren dye?)

Drimarene K dye is a fiber reactive dye, like Procion MX, and should be highly similar, and just as good in most respects. The big difference between Procion MX dye and Drimarene K dye is that the Drimarene K dye requires a little more warmth to drive the reaction between the dye and the fiber. The ideal reaction temperature for Procion MX dye is 30°C (86°F), though it can be used at temperatures as low as 21°C (70°F) if additional time is allowed, while the ideal reaction temperature for Drimarene K dye is 40°C (104°F). I would guess that you'd need to allow your Drimarene K dye to react at a reaction temperature of 30°C or higher. In other respects, Drimarene K dyes will have the same advantages you find with Procion MX dyes, such as ease of use (steaming is not required), and very permanent molecular bonds between the dye and the fiber, so that, when properly applied, the dyes do not wash out of fabric, but instead stay bright through years of use.

There are many practical ways that you can increase the temperature of your dye reactions over the temperature of your room. See "What is the effect of temperature on fiber reactive dyes?", for a number of suggestions.

While both Procion MX dye and Drimarene K dye can be used without heat-setting, in some circumstances dye artists prefer to heat-set the dyes on the fabric with steam. This provides the extra energy for the dyes to react with the fabric in a short period of time. Steam-setting these room-temperature dyes is often a good idea for silk painting, or in the case of a very cool dyeing studio.

Drimarene X dyes are a different class of dyes which requires much more warmth to react than Drimarene K dyes, just as Procion H dyes require considerably higher temperatures than Procion MX dyes. If you are using Drimarene X dyes, you will find that steaming to heat-set the dyes is necessary, unless you are immersion dyeing in a hot dyebath. While a dyebath should be about 30°C for Procion MX dyes and 40°C for Drimarene K dyes, they should be 80°C for Procion H dyes, and 95°C (almost boiling!) for Drimarene X dyes.

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Can you dye duchess satin with a dylon dye?

Can you dye duchess satin with a dylon dye?

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Dye polyester and poly/cotton or poly/rayon blends

It depends entirely on what fiber your duchess satin is made from. It's easy to dye rayon/silk blend duchess satin, but very difficult to dye polyester duchess satin.

Dylon makes several different kinds of dye that will work well on the rayon/silk blend type of duchess satin. Both rayon and silk are easily dyed, using Dylon Hand Dye, Dylon Machine Dye, Dylon Cold Dye, Dylon Permanent Dye, or even Dylon Multi Purpose dye; the last one listed is the most prone to fading. Dylon Cold Dye can be used in lukewarm water, and therefore is suitable for duchess satin that is labeled "wash in cold water", though you must know that there is no dye that can be safely used if your fabric is labeled "dry clean". (You can't dye anything that is not washable.)

There is no Dylon dye that will work on polyester satin. The only dye that works on polyester fabric is called disperse dye. You can buy disperse dye by mail-order only. Fibrecrafts in the UK and Blick Art Materials in the US sell "iDye Poly"; PRO Chemical & Dye in the US sells "PROsperse" direct dye; Batik Oetoro in Australia sells "PolySol" disperse dye. None of these can be used without extensive boiling; you cannot use them on your polyester satin if it is labeled "dry clean only" or even "wash in cold water".

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[This answer was first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on October 11, 2008.]

Saturday, November 22, 2008

How can I mercerize 100% cotton at home?

How can I mercerize 100% cotton at home?

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Sodium hydroxide (lye)

safety face shield
chemical resistant gloves

Mercerization is a dangerous process, and therefore not suitable for anyone without laboratory safety training. You would need to wear goggles or preferably a full face mask (similar in shape to what welders wear), long chemical-resistant gloves, lab coat, and a long chemical-resistant waterproof apron.

Here's a recipe to consider: stretch fabric or yarn tightly on some sort of frame, soak it in a room-temperature bath of 20% sodium hydroxide for five minutes, then rinse, neutralize the pH with dilute vinegar or citric acid dissolved in water, and rinse some more. To make the sodium hydroxide bath, you would slowly add 200 grams of sodium hyroxide to something like 700 ml of cold water, then top it up to exactly one liter.

Sodium hydroxide is also known as lye or caustic soda, and can cause severe burns. A small splash into your eyes can cause blindness. If you get sodium hydroxide in your eye, you must hold your eye open while flushing it with running water for at least fifteen minutes, and then seek medical treatment. When dissolving sodium hydroxide, add the crystals to water, never water to the crystals. A considerable amount of heat will be generated.

Stretching your fabric or yarn before mercerizing is necessary in order to prevent shrinkage and to produce the desired sheen; if you don't stretch it, the process is called slack mercerization, and will result in significant shrinkage and will not increase the sheen of the cotton. It will improve the color intensity obtained by dyeing the fabric or yarn, however.

Doug Wilson and Olli Niemitalo posted about mercerization on the DyersLIST some time ago, so look in that mailing list's archives.

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Friday, November 21, 2008

composition of union dyes

Name: Rachel

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Washfast Acid dyes
at Paradise Fibers

Washfast Acid dyes
Also known as Nylomine dyes, excellent for use on nylon, wool, and other protein-type fibers. One ounce of dye will dye six pounds of fiber!

Message: Do you have any information about the composition of union dyes, in terms of the ratio of acid leveling dye to direct dyestuff? I'm trying to mix my own for dyeing blends, and would like some idea of where to start in terms of how much of each type. Any advice? Thank you!

I've never seen any information on this anywhere. The one thing I would recommend, which you've probably already thought of, is to measure the dye by weight, not by volume, for greatest reproducibility. Different dyes, and even different dyelots of the same dye, have different densities, so measurements made by volume are not as consistent as those made by weighing out the dye.

ProChem recommends 1.2 grams of their Kiton acid leveling dye per pound of fiber for a pale color, 4.5 grams for a medium color, 9 grams for a dark color, and 25 grams for black, while they recommend 0.5 grams of their Diazol direct dyes for a pale color, 2.25 grams for a medium color, 9 grams for a dark color [this must be a misprint], and 13.5 grams for black. Except for that anomalous dark quantity for direct dye, the ratios are about 2:1 by weight, for similar impact.

So, it looks like a ratio of 2:1 by weight would probably be a good start, at least if you're using bulk acid leveling dyes and direct dyes from ProChem, which is a very satisfactory supplier. However, suppose that you dye a fabric blend that is 33% protein fiber and 67% cellulose fiber. Then it would make more sense to adjust the ratio of dye weights, accordingly. 33% protein/67% cellulose would call for equal weights of dye. 67% protein/33% cellulose would require four parts acid dye to one part direct dye.

For perfectly equal results, you'd need to allow, as well, for the fact that nylon takes some acid dyes more brightly than wool does, and vice versa for others, or for the greater brightness of mercerized cotton as compared to unmercerized cotton. How confusing it gets!

I think that the simplest thing would be to compromise on using twice as much of the acid dye by weight. Since it's likely that you will not know in advance how much of each fiber you have, nor how brightly they will take the appropriate dye, there's not a lot of point in fine-tuning beyond that.

If only you could get hold of some of the syntan reserve agent that the makers of Alter Ego dyes add to their dye fixative in order to keep their direct dye from staining the protein fiber. Then you could make good mixtures that dye the different fibers in different colors. I don't know of any source for the reserve agent, though. I'm sure it's available only in huge quantities. I know that's not what you're asking about, but it's such an interesting idea that I can't help but throw it out there.

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Can faux suede curtains that are 100% polyester be bleached to white?

Name: Troy

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Message: I am purchasing some faux suede curtains that are 100% polyester. They are beige in color and I'm wondering if they can be bleached to white? We are waiting to hear from you before we purchase them. Thanks for your time and consideration.

I do not believe that you should purchase these curtains. It is impossible to predict whether or not it will be possible to discharge the dye in them, even if you use the correct dye removal chemical so that you do not damage the fiber. If you owned the curtains already and were planning to throw them away if you could not color them, it would be worth trying, but the fact is that you cannot know whether or not this will work until after you have tried it, and you cannot, of course, return the curtains once you have tried unsuccessfully to remove their dye. So, these curtains are not a good idea as a new investment.

If you do try to bleach out the dye from polyester, never use household chlorine bleach! The hypochlorite it contains will permanently damage polyester, producing an ugly yellowish color that is impossible to remove. There are other chemicals that are much safer for polyester. The easiest one to find is Rit Color Remover, which can, with care, be used to remove many dyes, if you use very hot water. Some dyes will not respond to Rit Color Remover (nor to chlorine bleach), so success is not assured, but at least there is no inescapably disastrous chemical interaction with polyester. See "What chemicals can be used to remove dye?".

A better answer would probably be to buy white polyester faux suede yardage and use it to make new curtains. It is relatively easy to sew curtains, much easier than any other sewing project. To easily make neat pleats at the top, use pleating tape. Polyester imitation suede has the special property of not fraying at the edges if you cut it with scissors, so hemming might not even be necessary. If you would rather have the curtains professionally made, you should be able to find a local firm that will be happy to do the work for you.

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Are white cotton socks dyed or are they naturally white?

Name: Eric

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Message: Are white cotton socks dyed or are they naturally white?

Cotton bolls look white on the cotton plant, but when the fiber is cleaned, spun, and woven or knitted, you can see that the natural color is more of a beige, or even a light brown.

White cotton fiber that you buy has invariably been bleached to make it white. Because it is such a problem for the environment and therefore expensive to use, hydrogen peroxide is preferred, in the textile industry, to the chlorine bleach (hypochlorite) you normally think of when you hear the word "bleach".

Florescent brighteners are also used to make white textile fibers appear whiter. They work by absorbing ultraviolet light, which is invisible to our eyes, and then emitting it as visible blue light. These brighteners are used in the textile industry, and they are also added to most laundry detergents to keep your clothes looking as bright as possible.

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Is it possible to dye fabric with blood?

Is it possible to dye fabric with blood (for a special project)?

I think that what you want to do is basically the opposite of what one is supposed to do for blood stains that you want to wash out. You should cook the blood into the fabric, and then let it age for some time.

Heat will denature protein. The denatured protein loses its shape and tangles around the other molecules of denatured protein. A good way to apply the heat would be to spread the fabric out, as much as possible, and bake it. Perhaps you could air-dry the blood on the fabric, then wrap the fabric around layers of crumpled unprinted newsprint paper, to allow air between the layers, and bake it in the oven, on a very low heat, for several hours.

I would advise you to not wash the fabric any more than you have to. Blood cannot be used as a true dye, but it can stain the fabric very effectively. Repeated washing will cause it to fade and gradually wash out, however. Rinse no more than you need to to get the artwork to look the way you want it to.

It is traditional in Japan to use freshly made soymilk as the binder for hand-painted earth oxides on fabric. The soymilk, of course, like blood, contains mostly protein. (Blood also contains some iron.) Treating your blood like the soymilk in the iron oxide painting recipes would probably be a good idea. Do NOT wash the fabric for several months, if possible. The longer the soymilk ages, the more permanent and washable the fabric designs become, though it should never be machine-washed or used for clothing that must be washed frequently; the same might be true of blood, as well. Check out these two pages:
"Earth Oxides", from Table Rock Llamas Fiber Arts Studio
"Make Your Own Natural Pigment Dyes", by John Marshall [soy milk is discusses towards the bottom of the page]

More information on the chemistry of blood proteins as they relate to this project....

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Heating the blood is inevitably going to turn it brown, as the hemoglobin turns into methemoglobin. So will any kind of aging or drying of the blood; you know how blood stains always turns brown when they dry. The only way to avoid this would be to chemically treat it to form a more stably colored protein.

This is from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
"The iron of hemoglobin is normally in the reduced or ferrous state, in both oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin. If the iron itself becomes oxidized to the ferric state, hemoglobin is changed to methemoglobin, a brown pigment incapable of transporting oxygen."

So, for example, you can treat it with carbon monoxide to turn it a very bright red, as the hemoglobin is converted to carboxyhemoglobin. This is commonly done in marketing dark red tuna steaks, to make them appear to be fresher than they really are, and it's also the reason why the edge of slow-smoked meat is pink inside. (Actually, it's a related protein, myoglobin, that is present in meat, but I think the chemistry is very similar.) Of course, carbon monoxide is very dangerous to work with; if you use a barbecue smoker, you must do so outside, and the methods used for making tuna look fresher, which I imagine used piped-in carbon monoxide, are probably not safe to use outside of a lab.

Another chemical that can be used to retain a reddish color to the protein in blood is sodium nitrite. I've no idea how much you would need; presumably very little, since you would have only a small weight of blood in your fabric. One recipe I saw for making corned beef that calls for 4 pounds of beef specifies 4 tablespoons of "curing salt", which as far as I can tell is a mixture of 6.25% sodium nitrite with salt.

I really have no idea how long you should bake your fabric with dried blood in it, to encourage the protein to bind to the fabric as it denatures. I recommend you use a low heat, ideally below the boiling temperature of water (212°F or 100°C) so that you do not risk scorching your fabric. I'm imagining you might bake it for several hours at this low heat. All of this is guesswork and will require experimentation to see whether it works for you.

I would like to recommend Harold McGee's book "On Food and Cooking", especially page 148 of the 2004 second edition, which talks about the different forms of myoglobin, which is the oxygen-carrying molecule in muscle, closely related to the hemoglobin in blood. You can see it online through Google Books.

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Monday, November 17, 2008

How would you tie dye soccer socks with a regular tie dye kit?

How would you tie dye white soccer socks with a regular tie dye kit?

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Learn to Tie Dye

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Usually, tie dye kits are for shirts. And, I know I probably shouldn't use the same amount for the soccer socks as I would for shirts. So, how much would you think I would use for them, and any other additional details I should think about while tie dying them? Oh, plus, could you mix two colors together to get a new tie dye color if the color you want doesn't come with the kit? Thanks!

You can use a good tie-dye kit on any natural fiber, such as cotton, linen, or bamboo, and also on rayon, since it is a cellulose fiber, and good tie dye kits contain fiber reactive dye. Unfortunately, soccer socks are usually made of synthetic fiber blends that are not suitable for dyeing with tie-dye dyes. (All purpose dyes such as Rit don't work on synthetic fibers, either.) If your socks are 10% spandex or nylon, and 90% cotton, you can dye them just like 100% cotton. Don't mix your dyes up any differently than you would for tie-dyeing shirts; a pound of cotton is a pound of cotton, whether it's in a shirt or in socks. Just follow the usual instructions. Be sure you have extra pairs of socks handy, or other cotton or rayon clothing you can tie-dye, so you don't waste the dye. You can dye several pairs of socks with the amount of dye you'd use for a single shirt.

If your socks are made of nylon or wool, you can dye them with tie-dye dyes if you substitute an acid, such as vinegar, for the soda ash dye fixative. Nylon and wool both require an acid instead of a base to dye. If your tie-dye kit does not have a soda ash as a separate pre-soak, but instead has the soda ash already mixed into the dye powder, then you can't use it for nylon at all. Surprisingly, all purpose dyes such as Rit, which work so poorly on cotton, are okay for use on nylon, if you add vinegar to your dyebath.

If your soccer socks are made of polyester, then you can't use any ordinary type of dye at all. Neither the Procion dyes in good tie-dye kits, nor all purpose dyes such as Rit, will color polyester at all. You can dye polyester by boiling it with a special polyester dye such as "iDye Poly" which is available by mail-order only, or you can use a good thin fabric paint that is designed to mimic dye, such as Dye-Na-Flow or Dharma Pigment Dyes. Or, you can make iron-on designs on paper with disperse dye fabric crayons, then iron them onto your synthetic-fiber socks.

The dyes in tie-dye kits are perfect for mixing together. Mix turquoise with yellow to make green, mix turquoise and red together to make purple, and mix red and yellow together to make orange. A little red mixed with turquoise makes royal blue, and blue added to orange makes brown. You can also order your tie-dye Procion dyes premixed in any color you like. Dharma Trading Company and PRO Chemical & Dye both sell a hundred different colors of Procion MX type dye, which is the very best type of dye for tie-dyeing. Their prices are very good, too, because each two-ounce jar of dye will dye twelve shirts, and the dye stays bright for years on your clothing. (Compare that to all-purpose dye, where each box of dye will dye only a single shirt, and then it fades almost immediately.)

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[Portions of this answer were first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on October 20, 2008.]

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Can I remove the color from a black nylon/spandex blend garment?

Name: John

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Rit Color Remover Removes Dyes

Use Rit Color Remover in the washing machine in hot water, or, for greatest effectiveness, heat fabric in Rit Color Remover on the stovetop.

Tintex Color Remover contains sodium dithionite (also known as sodium hydrosulfite) with sodium carbonate, like Rit Color Remover. Jacquard Color Remover contains thiourea dixoide, instead.

Message: I’ve been scouring the web for a solution to my dilemma but haven’t turned up anything conclusive. I found your web site and you seem to know an awful lot about coloring fabrics, so I was hoping you might be able to help me out without taking up too much of your time.

I have a black garment, composed of 80% Nylon, 20% Spandex, and I would very much like to turn it white, bright yellow, or bright pink. White is preferable, which is more of a bleaching process I would imagine. But any of these will do.

Is there a method you can suggest that will reliably accomplish turning the black into one of these colors without damaging the fabric?

This is difficult problem, one that cannot always be solved. The spandex that is blended with the nylon in your garment causes a lot of trouble, as a spandex/nylon blend is far more difficult to decolorize or dye than plain 100% nylon would be. It is likely that it will be impossible to do what you want to do.

As you have suspected, it's almost never possible to remove all of the color from a piece of dyed fabric; the very best you can expect it to obtain a tan or beige color, and sometimes you get quite unexpected colors, such as orange or dull green. Unfortunately, you can never have any idea in advance of whether ANY of the color will be removable. Some dyes can be discharged, but others are completely resistant to discharging. Some dyes are so resistant to discharging that they can be reduced to shreds by the discharging agent and still retain their color.

The first thing to know is that synthetic fibers, such as nylon and spandex, are badly damaged by exposure to household chlorine bleach, which is based on hypochlorite. Nylon pretty much dissolves in hypochlorite, and spandex develops holes and weak spots. Never use hypochlorite bleach on any garment containing nylon or spandex. Only 100% cotton, linen, hemp, or other plant-based natural fibers can be decolorized with hypochlorite bleach.

However, there are alternatives that work in a completely different way. While hypochlorite bleach is an oxidizer, which works by breaking up the dye molecules, the other chemicals that can be used to remove dye are all reducing type dye discharge agents. Their dye removal activity depends on their ability to chemically reduce the double bonds found in colored substances. I have written an article about the different chemicals that can be used to remove dye: see "What chemicals can be used to remove dye?", and scroll down to the section on reductive discharges.

The problem with the reductive discharge chemicals is that they all require heat to work well. This is a big problem for your project! Spandex is extremely sensitive to heat; in fact, I would advise you strongly to follow the care instructions on the label, which almost certainly indicate that the garment should be kept at or below 105°F (41°C). If you use higher temperatures, you are likely to find that the shape of your garment is distorted. Spandex can be dyed industrially at temperatures up to 140°F (the temperature of hot tap water), but that is before it has been manufactured to its final shape. (See "How to Dye Spandex".)

You should experiment with removing the color from your garment only if you will not mind very much if the garment is destroyed by your efforts. If you use a color remover without heat, most of the color will probably remain, though there's a chance that you will be very lucky and find that the dye in your garment is unusually easy to discharge. If you use the recommended amount of heat for the discharge chemical, your garment is likely to be damaged. Be very careful not to twist or stretch your spandex-containing garment while you are manipulating it.

The easiest to find of the discharge chemicals is Rit Color Remover; there are similar products under other brand names, such as Tintex Color Remover. Like all reductive discharge chemicals, Rit Color Remover requires heat to work. The easiest way to use it is in hot tap water in a washing machine, while the most effective method is to cook the garment in the color remover in a pot on the stovetop, bringing the temperature up to a simmer. Obviously, the stovetop method is right out, for a spandex blend. You might try the color remover in warm water in a plastic dishpan or bucket, being very careful not to twist or stretch the garment as you stir it. If you do not stir frequently, the color removal will be uneven, producing a somewhat tie-dyed effect, but if you stir vigorously, the garment is more likely to be damaged.

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An alternative chemical that is not difficult to find is Jacquard Color Remover. It contains an entirely different chemical than Rit Color Remover, and thus it may perform differently at the low temperatures you will be forced to use. The best instructions for thiourea dioxide, the main ingredient in Jacquard Color Remover, say to heat the garment to 180°F (82°C), but Jacquard's instructions imply that it can be used with more limited success at much lower temperatures. There is no guarantee that it will have any effect at all on the color of your garment, however, especially at temperatures below 180°F.

If you do manage to remove most of the color from your garment with a sulfur-based discharge agent, you will then need to dye it in order to cover up the beige color that is a likely result. Nylon can be dyed with a type of dye called acid dyes. Unfortunately, acid dyes require heat to attach well, so you once more run into the problem of being unable to follow the most effective recipe because of the heat-sensitivity of your spandex. You can try dyeing your nylon with a bright pink acid dye in warm water. A very brilliant true fluorescent pink acid dye is Rhodamine B, sold by PRO Chemical & Dye as 370 Rhodamine Red B and by Jacquard Products as 620 Hot Fuchsia. This dye, like all non-food-tested dyes, should never be used in any cooking pot that you intend to use again for food. There is some suspicion of possible carcinogenicity, so you must use only dyepots that will not be used with food, and wear gloves and take appropriate safety precautions.

It's likely that you will do better to buy a new garment in a color that you find more acceptable than the black one you already own. You may also wish to consider decorating the garment with an opaque metallic or pearlescent color of fabric paint that will show against the black material.

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Saturday, November 15, 2008

What should I do to stop the dye from coming out?

What should I do?

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Retayne

Retayne sets all-purpose dyes, such as Rit. It will not work on indigo denim.

Rit Dye Fixative
Rit Dye Fixative is very similar to Retayne.

I washed a garment in shower cream and the dye started to come out a whole lot. What should I do for a mordant effect? If I use salt, do I have to boil the garment? Someone told me to use vinegar. What is best, and why - please explain? I'm so afraid that all the color brightness will be ruined if more dye keeps coming out each time I hand wash it.

Looks like you have a garment that was dyed with a bad dye. Do not try mordanting the dye with salt or vinegar. First, because neither salt nor vinegar works as a mordant, and second, because it's way too late to use a mordant now anyway.

The shower gel most likely contained an ordinary detergent such as sodium lauryl sulfate, with mild acids similar to vinegar added to make it pH-neutral. If pH is involved in any way in your problems, than the answer is to increase the pH with washing soda or soda ash, not decrease it with vinegar.

You can buy a commercial dye fixative which is at least a hundred times more effective than salt or vinegar. It's called Retayne. Sometimes you can find it in a good quilting supply store or fabric store; if not, you will have to mail order it from any good dye supplier. Rit has recently introduced their own brand of this product, called Rit Dye Fixative; if you can find this product, use it.

If you can't find Retayne, then what you're going to have to do is wash the garment repeatedly, in the washing machine or by hand, with laundry detergent, in the hottest water the garment can stand, until all of the poorly attached dye is done coming out. This is a step that should have been performed by the manufacturer of the garment!

Then, if the brightness is gone, use a good dye to rejuvenate the color, unless it is made of undyeable synthetics. Your choice of dye depends completely on the fiber content of the garment. If it is cotton or rayon (viscose), use fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, Dylon Permanent Dye, or Dylon Machine Dye. Avoid all-purpose dyes such as Rit or Tintex unless you are dyeing a blend of cotton or rayon with nylon or wool.

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[Portions of this answer were first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on October 12, 2008.]

Friday, November 14, 2008

Is there a way I could make a powdered annato dye that I could store in a bottle?

Name: Judy

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Powdered Annatto

Annatto Seeds

Annatto Dye Recipe

Annatto can be used to dye not only foods, but also cotton, linen, wool, and silk.

cotton tea bags

Message: I'm a beginner and I'm using plant dyes before I get into the more "advanced" materials. I successfully used annato seeds with alum and ferrous sulfate. With the abundance of annato here in the philippines, I was wondering, is there a way I could make a powdered annato dye that I could store in a bottle? I tried cooking the dyebath until it dried and I scraped the material that clung to the pot bottom, but when I added the powder to water, it just floated and didnt mix. Is homemade powdered dye possible to make? Thank you.

What you're doing IS more advanced dyeing, in my opinion. I would call the best types of synthetic dyes more suitable for beginners, since they are much easier to use satisfactorily; natural dyeing is more advanced, because it takes so much more skill to get good results with it!

Are you using either soda ash or potash (sodium carbonate or potassium carbonate) in your dyebath? Old recipes for dyeing with annatto call for these chemicals for helping to dissolve annatto in a dyebath. Please test to see whether your annatto extract powder will dissolve more easily in water to which you have added about one tablespoon of sodium carbonate per gallon. If you don't know about soda ash, see if you can buy washing soda that is free of dyes, perfumes, and other additives; it contains sodium carbonate, too, though in a slightly different form. Sodium carbonate is usually available at swimming pool supply houses for use in raising the pH of the water. Avoid sodium bicarbonate, which is not alkaline enough for your purposes. Lye (sodium hydroxide) would also work, in smaller quantities, but it is much more dangerous to use.

The coloring in the waxing coating of annatto seeds is a carotenoid, bixin, closely related chemically to the far more expensive coloring principle of saffron. Like saffron and turmeric, it is extremely sensitive to fading caused by light; the energy absorbed by the dye from visible light breaks apart the dye molecule. Textiles dyed with annatto should be dried indoors after washing (not in the sunlight), stored in a dark place, and redyed every year or two as needed, when the color has faded too much. Here is a drawing depicting its chemical structure:

Your problem with the annatto extract is that it is hydrophobic, or oil-loving. Most substances are either hydrophobic, which means that they will dissolve better in oil than in water, or hydrophilic, which means that they dissolve better in water than in oil. Annatto is often used in cooking to provide a yellow color; a typical use is to grind the annatto seeds in a coffee grinder, then cook the powder in oil with other spices. If you cook annatto in a mixture of oil and water, you will see that the coloring principle, bixin, moves into the oil more than it does in the water. The same is true of the red pigment in tomatoes.

Unfortunately, it is impractical to apply a dyestuff to fabric when it is dissolved in vegetable oil instead of water. Imagine the mess! Some less oily solvents that would work well, such as chloroform, are too toxic for you to use. The chemical as first extracted from the seeds is in the form cis-bixin, which can also be dissolved in methanol (wood alcohol or methylated spirits) or acetone (fingernail polish remover). I think it would be easy to add annatto dissolved in methanol to your dyebath, since methanol is easily dissolved in water, but I'm not sure how much of the annatto would remain dissolved in the dyebath after you add it, and of course, as you heat the dyebath, the methanol would boil off at a lower temperature than water, exposing you to possibly dangerous (and flammable) fumes.

In the food industry, bixin is converted to an oleoresin by extracting annatto seeds with ethyl acetate, then treating this extract with sodium hydroxide (lye or caustic soda) or potassium hydroxide (caustic potash) with heat and pressure. This converts the bixin into the sodium or potassium salt, norbixin, which is soluble in water and commonly used as a food additive. It might be possible to adapt this process for use at home, but I don't think that you will want to. It's important to note that norbixin is not water-soluble in the presence of acid, such as vinegar.

One answer to relatively insoluble natural dyestuffs is to place the ground-up dyestuff into a small bag that you can make of a fine-mesh fabric and tie or sew closed, and cook this "teabag" with your fabric in the water. A little of the dye will dissolve in the water, then leave the water to color the properly-prepared fabric; as you boil the fabric with the dyestuff, with time, more and more dye leaves the dyestuff in the bag and colors the fabric. Be sure to use soda ash or another high-pH chemical with this method.

Another very good possibility is that you might store a concentrated liquid made from your annatto dyebath, instead of boiling it all the way down to dryness. Glass jars are the best for storage, but many plastics are fine, too. The kind of very thin gallon-sized plastic jugs we use in the US for milk are too thin to be a good choice for storage, as they inevitably will develop a leak, if you keep them too long, and spill their contents. Thicker plastic buckets or jars should be fine.

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

How to translate numbers on Dye Mixer Applet to grams of dye

Name: Felizitas

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Message: Olli's dyemixer question:
If I enter, e.g., 4 for one colour and 0.5 for the next, what does that mean: 4 gms of the first, 0.5 gms of the second on 100 grams of material? or 4 parts of the first and 0.5 parts of the second?

Olli Niemitalo's wonderful Dye Mixer Applet is a great way to experiment with dye colors, but unfortunately it has not been calibrated for how much dye is required to get each color.

As I wrote in a post on on the Dye Forum a couple of years ago, the "Mix Amount" is just a general indication. How much dye do you have to use to equal "1" or "2" on the slider bars? Unfortunately, you have to determine this for yourself, by looking at your own test swatches, if you have any yet, and estimating which concentration yielded a similar brightness to "1" or whatever on the slider bar, for a given dye. More unfortunately, you have to do this individually for each different dye. So, it's a lot of trouble to use the Dye Mixer Applet to predict exact amounts of dye to use to mix a particular color. What I use it for is just to get ideas for different combinations to try.

Olli wrote about this on the DyersLIST mailing list several years ago:

You should think of the Dye Amount value as being of an unknown unit. I cannot have it in grams or such because the actual amount of dye consumed is different for each combination of dye, dyeing method and type of canvas, and all the other additional parameters. All I am doing is giving you a proportional measure which helps you in the way that you can make observations like: "Oh, I need to double / halve / triple / whatever the amount of dye to move from this shade to that shade".

He also wrote:

I can only suggest that you find by experimenting the dye-specific ratios between the Amount values and the real-life dye amounts. For example, if you see that 2 g of a certain dye gives the same color as Amount = 0.5, then you know that one Amount unit corresponds to 4 g of the dye (calculated as 2 g / 0.5). The ratio is different for each dye!

About the "Canvas" choices: each dye color will produce a different final color depending on the exact white of the fabric being used. I imagine that the only reason there are so many choices in the Applet is because they were easy to put in. I just use the blank white, myself. Some of the choices are rather amusing, if you scroll down that long list.

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

An alternative to 'dye set' for tie-dyeing cotton?

Is there an easy-to-get alternative to 'dye set' for tie-dyeing cotton t-shirts?

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Retayne

Retayne sets all-purpose dyes, such as Rit. It will not work on indigo denim.

Rit Dye Fixative
Rit Dye Fixative is very similar to Retayne.

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Dylon Cold Fix is the same thing as soda ash, though far more expensive.

What kind of dye set are you looking for? The dye setting chemical used in good tie-dye kits and with Procion MX dye or Dylon Cold Dye is called soda ash. It is easy to find. You can buy it labeled as sodium carbonate, from the swimming pool supply section of the hardware store, or as washing soda from the grocery store (if you can find a brand that is free of dyes and perfumes, such as Arm & Hammer).

If you are looking for a dye set for Rit dye, don't bother with soda ash. Soda ash will not help set Rit dye at all. It works only for fiber reactive dyes such as Procion dyes, the type of dye used in all good tie-dye kits. To make Rit dye permanent, you have to buy a cationic dye fixative, such as Retayne. The company that makes Rit has recently introduced their own brand of Retayne which is called Rit Dye Fixative, but I have not yet seen it in local stores. You can find Retayne at your local quilting supply store, if you have a good one nearby, or you can mail-order Retayne from a good dye supplier. Household chemicals such as salt and vinegar cannot be used to set Rit dye. They don't work at all.

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[Portions of this answer were first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on September 13, 2008.]

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Can you dye a baby's clothes?

Can you dye a baby's clothes?

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Tulip One Step contains Procion MX type dye for cotton, rayon, or silk

If so do you know what kind of dye that you don't have to buy over the internet?

The best dye to use for baby clothes is fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. It bonds permanently to the fiber; once you've washed out the unattached excess dye, no more dye can become detached to possibly irritate the baby's skin.

You can buy this dye in the form of any good tie-dye kit. You can't buy good dye at the grocery store, but any good crafts store will have it. You can also find good dye in fabric stores such as Joann's. Look for a tie-dye kit made by Jacquard, Dylon, Rainbow Rock, or Tulip. Avoid the Rit tie-dye kit because it contains inferior dyes that do not attach to the fabric very firmly, so it may bleed for the life of the garment. Or, you can buy individual dye colors. Look for Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, or Jacquard Procion MX dye, or Dylon Machine Dye, Dylon Cold Water Dye, or Dylon Permanent Dye. Be sure to follow the instructions included with the dye.

Good dye costs less, per garment, when purchased online. One little packet of dye costs $3 and will dye only half a pound of fabric, but one $5 two-ounce jar of Procion dye will color 12 pounds of baby clothes. You do not have to have a credit card to order from Dharma Trading Company, which has a hundred different colors of the best Procion dyes, and dozens of wonderful dyeable baby outfits.

Be sure to buy only 100% cotton clothing to dye. Polyester will not accept the dye. Also avoid anything labeled stain-resistant, because it will not dye well. Allow your dyed items to react with the dye overnight in a warm place, or closely follow whatever the instructions say. Afterwards, wash once in cool water, without detergent, and then at least twice in the hottest water available, with detergent, preferably at least 140°F, to remove all of the excess unattached dye and make it ready for a baby to wear.

See also:
is it safe to dye baby clothes?
dyeing baby clothes

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[Portions of this answer were first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on September 20, 2008.]

Monday, November 10, 2008

Are tie dyed shirts machine washable if I apply soda ash?

Are tie dyed shirts machine washable if I apply soda ash?

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I used Procion MX dye to dye a cotton shirt, and I added soda ash to prevent it from bleeding and ruining the rest of my white shirts (that I wash in the same batch). However, I have heard that the soda ash will just help it bleed less. Will it ruin the rest of my white shirts if I wash them altogether? Thanks.

Yes, Procion MX dyed clothing is machine washable. If you followed a good recipe for tie-dyeing with Procion MX dyes and soda ash, then all you have to do now is remove the unattached excess dye. To do this, wash once in cool water, to remove the soda ash, then wash two or three times in the hottest water available, 140°F or higher. The heat of the water is what makes the dye wash-out work efficiently; cooler water will not work as well, so you'd have to wash it more.

After you have washed out all of the unattached excess dye in hot water, preferably in the washing machine, your shirts will be safe to wash at any temperature with any color of clothing. Unlike all-purpose dye (such as Rit or Tintex), which bleeds in the wash and should be hand-washed separately, Procion dyes bond permanently to the fiber in your cotton shirts. This permanent bond will not be broken even by boiling water.

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[Portions of this answer were first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on September 20, 2008.]

Sunday, November 09, 2008

What kind of dyeing is this called?

Hi Paula!

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Stainless Steel 10 Gallon Stock Pot with Lid

I am a beginner rug hooker and I am seeing all these gorgeous dyed pieces of wool. The one that intrigues me the most, I have attached a jpeg of and I'm hoping that you may be able tell me what kind of dying this is called? I'm sure once I know the correct term that I will be able to find instructions on your website?
Thanks!
Barb

That looks like low water immersion dyeing. My instructions for low water immersion (see "How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing") are for dyeing cotton and other cellulose fibers, and silk, using fiber reactive dyes, but you can use the exact same principle for wool dyes. The principle is to dissolve dye in a relatively small amount of water, and pour it over fabric which has been crammed into a small container.

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Washfast Acid dyes
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Washfast Acid dyes

There are many different kinds of dyes that you can use to hand-dye wool. All are acid dyes. The best are the Lanaset dyes, which are very rich in color and which do not wash out even if laundered in hot water. The WashFast Acid dyes cost less than the Lanaset dyes and can be very satisfactory. Even Kool-aid and other sources of food coloring will work to dye wool, though the results are less wash-resistant.

You will need a dyeing pot to dye wool with any dye other than food coloring. Only food coloring is safe to use in the same cooking pots that you use for food, and then only if you are not using any mordants, such as are often used with natural dyes. Vinegar and citric acid are obviously food-safe. The pot should not be made of aluminum, which will react with the acids used along with the dyes. The best materials for a dyeing pot are stainless steel or enamel. In order to obtain a perfectly smooth, even solid color, you must use a large pot with plenty of space, with a lot of water, accompanied by a lot of stirring. For low water immersion, the requirements are the opposite: you do not need a large volume, and you do not need to stir. For small pieces of fabric, or small amounts of yarn, you can place the wool, dye, and auxiliary chemicals into quart-sized glass canning jars, then place these jars into a large cooking pot filled with water to the same height as the liquid inside the jars. The equipment sold to make canning easy, such as glass jar lifters, can be very handy to use.

Low water immersion dyeing is a trial-and-error process. If you find that you get too little color variegation, try again with less water, or a more tightly fitting container, or less stirring. If you find that you end up with too much white on some parts of the fabric or yarn, use more water, or poke at the wool in the dyebath a little more, or use a larger container. Follow a good recipe for the dye that you decide to use.

You can do low water immersion with a single dye color, or with two or more. If you use a dye which has been premixed from two or more dye colors, then the colors will separate out on the fiber. The results can be unexpected, sometimes very beautiful, or sometimes not what you want. It is important to be able to find out whether the dye you are using is a pure single-hue dye, or a mixture of colors. I have included charts listing this information for a number of different dyes on my website.

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Saturday, November 08, 2008

How can I dye cotton yarn?

How can I dye yarn?

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I bought a bunch of 100% cotton yarn with an interesting weight. It didn’t come in the colors I wanted, (mostly shades of brown) so I bought white thinking I could dye it. I don’t know anything about dying. I looked at RIT, but it wasn’t the colors I wanted either, maybe something in the batik family? Tie dye? Directions? I’m lost as to where to start or what to buy or where to buy it.

It's better to use fiber reactive dye to dye cotton yarn. All-purpose dye, such as Rit, is a hot water dye, so it requires that you buy a dyeing pot to cook the yarn in the dye (don't reuse dyeing pots for food!), and it fades quickly and runs badly in the wash. Fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dye, are easy to apply because room temperature works well, so you don't have to invest in a stainless steel dyeing pot. A plastic bucket or tray will be fine. Procion MX dyes are permanent and will not fade for years, once you've washed out the excess unattached dye, and they are available in a hundred different colors if you order by mail. See "How to hand dye with fiber reactive dye" and "About Fiber Reactive Dyes".

If you don't want to wait to mail-order your dye, you can buy it at a crafts store. You cannot buy good dye at the grocery store or pharmacy. Most crafts stores will sell good tie-dye kits with excellent fiber reactive dyes. Avoid the Rit tie-dye kit and the Magic Strings tie-dye kit, because they contain inferior dyes. Look for a kit made by Jacquard, Dylon, Tulip, or Rainbow Rock. Or, look for individual dye colors. Good fiber reactive dyes that are sold in crafts stores and some fabric stores include Jacquard Procion MX dye, Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, Dylon Permanent Dye, and Dylon Cold Dye.

You will have a much wider choice of colors, and pay less per ball of yarn that you dye, if you order your dyes online from a good dye supplier. You don't have to use a credit card; you can mail them a check if you prefer. I recommend Procion MX fiber reactive dyes. They are the most economical and come in the widest range of colors. See "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World" for a list of different dye suppliers around the world.

You will need to rewind your yarn in skeins before dyeing, and tie them carefully so they don't get twisted and tangled up during dyeing and washing. See the instructions in my blog post "How to dye yarn or ribbon". For information on dyeing your yarn to make patterns as you knit, see the forum posts on "Self Striping Sock Yarn".

If you buy yarn that is not made of cotton, you will have to choose a different dye. Fiber reactive dyes work very well on cotton, linen, rayon, hemp, bamboo, and silk. They don't work on polyester or acrylic yarn.

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[This answer was first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on November 8, 2008.]

Friday, November 07, 2008

How can I dye something black without clothing dye?

How can I dye something black without clothing dye?

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I want to dye a skirt black, but don't have any dye. Is there any household product that I can use to dye it black? What about black shoe polish in water? I have no clue... I know for a fact that my mom won't let me buy dye, and she won't buy it for me. I need to have it done by Halloween.

Black shoe polish will rub off and ruin whatever you brush against while wearing the skirt. It's not worth risking your furniture and carpets. Anything that you use to color clothing, other than dye, will ruin the skirt. If you can't buy real dye, or buy a black skirt, you're better off skipping this project altogether.

If your skirt is already bad enough to throw away after a single use, then you can color it with paint or a permanent marker, but it will take much more time and cost more money than using dye, and the results will not look good enough to wear again except in a Halloween costume.

If your mother's problem with dye is only that she doesn't want you to use it in the washing machine, then you can buy a cool water dye from a crafts store, such as Procion MX Dye, Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, or Dylon Cold Water Dye, and apply it in a plastic bucket, following the instructions closely and stirring constantly. These fiber reactive dyes work very well on cotton, rayon, linen, silk, bamboo, and other natural fibers.

You can't buy a cool water dye in the grocery store, so you will have to buy it from a good crafts store. You can order excellent Procion MX dye from Dharma Trading Company online without using a credit card; just send them a check for the amount your order costs.

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[This answer was first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on September 20, 2008.]

Thursday, November 06, 2008

redyeing a vintage silk/rayon blend dress

Name: Cameron

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Message: Hello! I have a vintage dress that needs to be re-dyed. I don't know what the fabric content is. I believe it's from the mid-50s to early 60s. It's a Hawaiian/Asian style tunic and there is just a tag that says dry clean. I think it may be a silk rayon blend since many dresses in this style are made from that. What dye do you suggest I use, or am I better off letting a professional deal with it? thanks and great website

You can't dye it if it's not washable. Professionals will not dye anything that is dry-clean-only, either. If you are willing to risk it, try washing the dress. If it survives, you can consider dyeing it.

I would recommend that you use a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye, but only if the dress can be washed. You can do the dyeing in the washing machine: see "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?". Procion MX dye will work well on both silk and rayon. It will not work on polyester or acetate.

You can find a commercial garment dyer who uses fiber reactive dyes on my page "Where can I find someone to dye my clothing for me?". Be sure to tell them that you prewashed it, how you washed it, and how well it survived the washing.

If you can snip off a bit of extra fabric from an inside hem, you can try testing the fiber content of the dress with a burn test.

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Is it difficult to dye silk?

Is it difficult to dye silk? I heard somewhere that silk doesn't readily accept dye, is this true? I have a couple of silk shirts that are grey in color and would like to dye them black. Just trying to avoid trouble. Thanks.

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Silk is the easiest of all fibers to dye. It can be dyed with the same fiber reactive or direct dyes that are used to dye cotton, and it can also be dyed with acid dyes (even food coloring, which does not work at all on cotton). The very best dye for silk is Lanaset dye, with deep rich colors that won't wash out even in hot water. Procion MX dyes and the many tie-dye kits that contain them work very well on silk, too, and do not require heat, so they are far less trouble to apply than hot-water dyes.

Synthetic fibers that mimic silk are completely different, the exact opposite of silk. Polyester and acetate can be dyed only by boiling them extensively with a special polyester dye called disperse dye.

One problem is that the stitching that holds your shirts together at the seams is almost certainly made of polyester, so when you dye the silk, the seams will remain the original color. Another problem is that premixed Procion MX dye colors come out different in hue on silk than on cotton, so the results can be unpredictable. For a good true black, I recommend that you mail-order either Lanaset dye or Washfast Acid dye, because other types of dye, such as Rit dye, will often produce unexpected colors, rather than black. Dylon Permanent Black fiber reactive dye is a warm water dye, safe to use in a plastic bucket, that will also produce a good black color on silk. In Europe and Australia, look for Dylon Machine Dye, which contains the same excellent single-color black dye as is in Dylon Permanent Black, but which is not available in North America. If you want to use a cool water dye to dye silk shirts black, the dye color I recommend is PRO Chemical & Dye's Procion MX Silk Black 620.

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[Portions of this answer were first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on September 28, 2008.]

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

How can I dye jeans a different color?

How to dye jeans to different color?

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I have some hot pink jeans that i want to dye to a darker color, they fit me perfectly so i don't want to throw them away, it can be any color but brown or green. I just want to know what dye to buy and how to do it. Thanks.

If your jeans are made of mostly cotton, then the best choice would be a fiber reactive dye. Fiber reactive dyes are easier to use than all-purpose dyes such as Rit, and they will keep their color for years longer without fading. Don't use Rit dye, because it fades quickly and bleeds every time you wash it. For long-lasting, good-looking results, in North America, use Procion MX dye in a top-loader washing machine, along with salt and soda ash. (See the link to the instructions page below.) In Europe or Australia, use Dylon Machine Dye, which is a similar kind of dye formulated for use in front-loading washing machines; you cannot buy Dylon Machine Dye in North America, though.

Dye is transparent, so you need to select a color that will incorporate the existing pink color. Black will work well, but you'll have to use two to four times as much dye to get a good dark black, regardless of what type of dye you use. Purple, red, navy blue, or orange will work well, too. You will not be able to dye pink to make it yellow or bright green.

Unfortunately, the stitching that holds the seams together is almost certainly made of polyester, which means that it will not take the dye at all. The thread will remain the original color, while the fabric changes to whatever color you dye it. Choose your dye color so that the stitching will not stand out too badly.

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[This answer was first posted, by me, on Yahoo answers, on September 28, 2008.]

Monday, November 03, 2008

I have some lovely old linen napkins and tablecloths with monograms. Can I dye them to cover stains?

Name: Susan

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Message: Great Site and so helpful. Here is my question:
I have some lovely old linen napkins and tablecloths with monograms. But, the napkins are stained. I would like to dye them in a single color to try to cover the stains. What type of dye (the fiber reactive?) and technique would you recommend? Thanks so much.

Because all dye is transparent, dyeing the napkins a single solid color will not cover the stains. Instead, the stains will dye to a darker color than the rest of the napkins.

I recommend that you try to get out the stains as much as possible before dyeing them. Careful cleaning will also prepare the napkins to accept dye. There may be stains that you cannot even see right now which will repel dye. Grease stains in particular will repel dye, resulting in lighter patches, whereas stains of protein or carbohydrate can cause more dye to attach, resulting in colors even darker than you would expect.

Hot water will remove stains better than cooler water, with the exception of bloodstains. You might start by washing with a grease remover, such as Pinesol or Lestoil. If stains remain after you have laundered in hot water with a grease remover, and used detergent, then you may want to try chlorine bleach and/or Rit Color Remover. (If you use both, be sure to wash thoroughly in between.) Rit Color Remover requires the use of very hot water, for best results.

The usual recommendation for pre-scouring before dyeing is to wash the items in hot (140°F) water with Synthrapol or another detergent, plus extra soda ash to enhance cleaning. This is in addition to any soda ash you may use in the dyeing process itself.

If the napkins remain badly stained after all that, then I recommend that you not try to dye them a single solid color. Instead, consider using a multi-colored approach such as low water immersion or dye painting.

Linen, like cotton, is best dyed with a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. I do not recommend the use of an all-purpose dye, such as Rit, because it will fade quickly, and run in the laundry. You can buy Procion MX dye by mail-order from a good dye supplier, or you can go to a crafts store or art supply store and look for a fiber reactive dye there. Fiber reactive dyes you might see include Jacquard Products Procion MX dye, Dylon Permanent Dye, Dylon Cold Dye, Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, and (in Europe or Australia, but not North America) Dylon Machine Dye. See "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World".

The easiest way to dye anything a solid color is in the washing machine. Find a good recipe to follow before you buy your dye, as some brands of dye will require too many packages in order to fill one washing machine load, and will not be economical. You will also need a large quantity of salt. See "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?". Smaller quantities can be dyed via the same method in a five-gallon plastic bucket, using anywhere from five teaspoons to twenty tablespoons of Procion MX dye (15 to 150 grams) for a five-pound washing machine load, depending on the depth of color desired.

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Sunday, November 02, 2008

How can I dye bone?

Name: Karan

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Retayne fixes most dyes, including Rit

New Rit Dye Fixative
is similar to Retayne

Message: I have dyed a piece of bone for a project I am working on, but the color keeps running until the piece is faded. What do I need to use to seal the color in, so it is safe to wear while touching fabric?

You'll probably need to use a different dye, or at the very least a different recipe for the dye you are using.

What kind of dye are you using? And, how are you using it? What temperature are you dyeing at? How long do you simmer the bone with the dye? What other chemicals do you add, such as vinegar?

The dye I used for the bone was rit dye and I do not think I put vinegar in the mix. I did simmer it for about 5 mins, but I did not want it to be longer because it is a bone. I have also tried it with cold water, so what other dye could I use for this dye job. After it got to the color I wanted I let it dry then I wet it again and put it on a white cloth and it bled on the cloth any help please.

When you dye bone, although the primary structure is composed of minerals such as calcium, what you're really dyeing is the protein scaffold that supports the minerals. (The same is true for dyeing eggshells).

There are three main choices for dyeing bone. One of the choices is acid dye. Rit dye does contain acid dye (in addition to a cotton dye that will not stick to bone at all). Unfortunately, the dye in Rit dye is not among the better acid dyes, as it is not very wash-resistant. You can do better. Like all acid dyes, Rit does require very hot water to work. You can't use Rit dye as a cool water dye. All acid dyes work best in the presence of some acid, such as about 100 ml of white vinegar per four liters of water (that's equal to six tablespoons plus two teaspoons of vinegar, in a gallon of water).

You must wash the piece until all of the dye that is not attached has come off. The only dye you want remaining in your piece is the dye that is actually attached to it. Loose dye that rubs off is a bad thing.

Ways to make acid dye work better include: using both acid and heat, as described above; using a better acid dye, such as Lanaset dye or Washfast Acid dye; and/or using a cationic aftertreatment to try to fix the dye afterwards. See "Commercial Dye Fixatives".

Another option is to use a cool water dye. All-purpose dye, such as Rit dye, can never be a cool water dye; it requires heat to attach to the substrate. Instead, use a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. This dye can be used at temperatures as low as 70°F., if you use soda ash with it as an auxiliary chemical. (When used with an acid such as vinegar instead of soda ash, Procion dyes become acid dyes, and require heat.) For your choice of a hundred different colors of Procion MX dye, order by mail from a good dye supplier such as PRO Chemical & Dye or Dharma Trading Company. Alternatively, you can find several fiber reactive dyes at a good crafts store or art supply store. A good tie dye kit will work fine, and you can mix the colors to get the color you want. Good brands of tie-dye kits include Jacquard, Rainbow Rock, Dylon, or Tulip. (Avoid the tie-dye kits made by Rit and the Magic Strings tie-dye kits.) For individual dye colors, look for Jacquard Procion MX dye, or Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, or Dylon Permanent dye, or Dylon Cold Dye. All of these dyes contain fiber reactive dyes which can be used in cool or warm water, so they do not require cooking, and they are much more permanent than an all-purpose dye such as Rit. Some will work better than others on bone. Use the tie-dye recipe to make a very concentrated mixture of dye in water. Some kits contain soda ash already mixed in with the dye, others require you add it separately. Read the instructions carefully. After leaving the dye on the bone overnight, rinse very thoroughly.

The third kind of dye that can be used on bone is Basic dye. Jacquard Products used to recommend their Wood and Reed dye for dyeing bone. They no longer sell this type of dye, but it is still available from Aljo dyes, in New York. I don't really like the idea of a non-chemist using this type of dye in the kitchen, though, because some basic dyes are suspected of being carcinogenic. I recommend that you try fiber reactive dye, instead, or perhaps see if aftertreating acid dyes with Retayne solves your problem with acid dye.

You can also try painting your dyed bone with a clear sealer such as satin polyurethane, but the results will look less natural, and you should rinse excess dye from the bone before applying any such sealer, and be sure that it is absolutely dry before painting it.

In any case, expect the color you obtain with your dye, before rinsing, to be darker than your ultimate color will be after rinsing. You will need to use more dye so that you get a darker color before rinsing. Only then can your results be dark enough after rinsing and drying.

See also: "What kind of dye should be used to dye bone rings? "

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Saturday, November 01, 2008

I am trying to dye 100% white cotton to a very bright vibrant red using fiber reactive dyes. What is the difference between the procion dyes?

Name: Brandon

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Procion MX Fiber Reactive Cold Water Dye

When mixed with soda ash, Procion dyes are permanent, colorfast, and very washable. You can easily create a palette of brilliant colors ranging from light pastels to deep, vibrant hues. Procion is perfect for natural plant fibers — cotton, linen, paper, reeds, and wood. Do not use it to dye synthetics. Use Procion for tie-dye, vat dyeing, batik, airbrush, handpainting, printing, spatter-painting and more! This concentrated dye, which you add to hot water, gives you the most brilliant color of all dyes. Typically, 1 oz can dye more than 5 yards of fabric or about nine T-shirts . Click on the Resources tab for more information and detailed instruction sheets. Each bottle contains 2/3 oz (20 ml). The following ingredients are needed for fabric dyeing with Procion dyes: Jacquard ® Soda Ash (to make colors permanent); Jacquard ® Urea (a color enhancer); and Jacquard ® Synthrapol (a liquid detergent).

Message: I am trying to dye 100% white cotton to a very bright vibrant red using fiber reactive dyes. What is the difference between the procion dyes in the following three websites: Dharma Trading Company, Mister Art, , and Dick Blick?
In the last two sites, are the Bright Scarlet and Fire Engine Red the same in both sites? (The color swatches look different in comparing the two sites). Out of the three sites, which red would be the brightest? Thank you very much for your time and consideration. You and your website are inspiring beyond belief!

The Procion MX fiber reactive dyes at Dharma Trading Company are a little less expensive than the similar dyes at the other two companies, because they come in larger jars, a minimum of two ounces each, compared to only two-thirds of an ounce per jar at Mister Art and Dick Blick. Larger jars cost less per gram of dye, as a rule.

The colors at Mister Art and Dick Blick are exactly the same as each other, for the colors with the same names, since they both sell Jacquard Products brand Procion MX dyes. Try to imagine a color between what the swatches for the two companies show, for each color name. Some of the colors are identical at Dharma, the ones that contain only a single color of dye, but many of the colors are proprietary mixtures, and are therefore slightly different at Dharma than at the other two. The reds in particular are either slightly bluish in color or are mixture of slightly bluish reds with either yellow or orange, to make them more of a 'true' red.

To compare different colors, look at my page of "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?". The dyes at Dick Blick and Mister Art are listed in the "Rupert Gibbon and Spider" column. Apparently the "Fire Engine Red" sold by Dick Blick and Mister Art is the same dye mixture as Dharma's "#9 scarlet". It is a mixture of red MX-5B with orange MX-2R. It is not the same as Bright Scarlet, which is another red mixture.

I think that Fire Engine Red is as excellent bright red mixture. I'm afraid I do not remember how Bright Scarlet compares, as I have not used it for many years. I usually mix my own red from the two pure single-hue colors red MX-5B with orange MX-2R. It is often handy to purchase a pre-mixed color, however.

If you are dyeing a solid color, you won't much care about my next point, but if you are tie-dyeing, you will notice that some color mixtures separate out a little on the fabric, so that areas of red are surrounded by a little yellow haloing. If this is undesirable, the Fire Engine Red (or Dharma's #9) is very good, because the orange and red do not separate out. For solid colors, either mixture will work well.

I recommend filtering your dye through nylon pantyhose-type stockings after you dissolve it. If you don't have any worn-out stockings, buy the cheapest store brand of knee-high nylon stocking at a drug store. You can also use a coffee filter to strain your dye mixtures, but it is much, much slower, and more perfect at filtering, than is usually required.

Be sure to prewash your cotton in hot water, with detergent. Boost the action of the detergent by adding some extra soda ash. If you have not yet purchased your fabric, look for mercerized PFD cotton, or use rayon, instead, as both of these will dye produce brighter colors than non-mercerized cotton will. Avoid dyeing permanent-press or stain-resistant fabric. For the very brightest colors, use more dye powder than the recipe calls for, and be sure that your dyeing temperature is at least 70°F, if not higher.

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