Archives for November, 2010

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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

I used to have grey dye and now it's not available. How do I mix the grey?

Name: Jasmine

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Country or region: United States

Message: I have dyed several items over the years. I used to have grey dye and now it's not available. I have white cotton shower curtains that I want to dye grey---How do I mix the grey? One site said Navy and Black? Do you have any other solutions?? Thank you so much!

It's better to buy a premixed gray dye than to mix your own, unless you are very skilled at color mixing. Most serious dyers purchase their dyes by mail-order, because that's the way to get much higher-quality dyes, in a much wider selection of colors, often for a much more economical price.

You didn't mention what type of dye you are using. Does this mean that you are using All-Purpose dye? This is a very commonly-used type of dye, because, in the United States, it is readily available at all sorts of stores, even grocery stores and pharmacies. Unfortunately, all-purpose dyes are very low in quality, and perform poorly. They contain dyes which bleed badly in the wash, fading quickly and ruining anything else they are washed with. There are other dyes which are easier to use, since they don't require the dye to be cooked with the fiber, and which last for years longer in the fabric,

The best type of dye for dyeing cotton is called fiber reactive dye. You can buy it under several brand names, such as Procion, Dylon, or Tulip. You might be able to find Dylon Permanent Dye or Tulip Permanent Dye at a fabric store, but chances are that they won't have every color you want. Instead, I recommend that you purchase Procion MX dyes by mail-order. You can buy many different colors from a dye supplier such as PRO Chemical & Dye, in Massachusetts, or Dharma Trading Company, in California. They each carry over a hundred different colors of Procion MX dye. See "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World", for links and contact information.

You will also need to buy soda ash or washing soda from either the dye company or your local hardware store (make sure it's sodium carbonate), and a large quantity of plain non-iodized salt from the grocery store, in order to dye your cotton shower curtain in the washing machine, which is the easiest method for obtaining a solid color. See "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?".

If you do want to mix your own gray color, everything depends on what color your original black dye produces when it is diluted. Since all-purpose dye consists of more than one type of dye, including acid dye which simply washes out of cotton, it's impossible to tell what color it will produce until you wash it out after dyeing. Only after you wash out the acid dye will you know what color the direct dye in the mixture leaves behind.

Many people complain that black Rit brand All Purpose Dye produces a purple shade. If your black dye produces a purple, you have to use yellow to correct the color and make it more neutral. However, if the black dye produces a greenish shade, you must instead add red to correct the color cast. If the diluted black is bluish, use orange or brown to correct it, and if the diluted black is brown, use navy blue to correct it. If you add too much of the correcting color, you'll go too far in the wrong direction and have to add more of the original color. The intensity of the color will be determined by the weight of the dye, divided by the weight of the fabric you are dyeing.

Mixing your own gray is a fascinating project for someone who is very interested in color, but for an infrequent dyer who doesn't want to spend days on this project, it would make a lot more sense to try to buy a gray pre-mixed color that is already the color that you want. You will also be surprised, if you switch from all-purpose dye to fiber reactive dye, by how much longer the dye lasts. Once you've washed out any excess unattached dye with hot water, fabric colored with fiber reactive dye can even be laundered with white clothes, even in hot water, without any dye bleeding from one item to another. You can never do that with all-purpose dye.

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Monday, November 29, 2010

Name: Amanda

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Acid Dyes

(For wool, cashmere, angora, mohair, silk, & nylon)

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are the most washfast of all dyes for protein fibers. Rich, deep colors.Buy from

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Washfast Acid dyes
at Paradise Fibers

Washfast Acid dyes

Designed to permanently dye protein fibers -- animal fibers like wool, silk, angora, mohair, alpaca and nylon. These brilliant shades are carefully selected from available super milling and premetalized colors. They have excellent wash and light fastness properties.

Country or region: North America

Message: Hi there-
I was lucky enough to stumble onto a very inexpensive red cashmere ball gown. I've worn it to a few occasions and have since decided I'd like to use the yardage to create a throw or blanket. But, its red. Really red. Not that I necessarily have anything against the color but its a bit bold for my style of decorating. I've come to ask if you had advice or experience on how I could dye or otherwise change the color of my many yards of red cashmere. I'd be looking to achieve something in the brown family... so not sure if I'd need to take a step to dull or remove some of the red or if I can skip straight to taking it to "brown"... I'd love any tips or product recommendations.

I like this project, because you're not set on keeping the gown exactly the size it is now, which is always a difficulty in redyeing ready-to-wear clothing that's made of wool and other animal-source fibers. Dyeing cashmere is not at all difficult, as long as shrinkage is not a huge issue. You will, however, need to keep sudden temperature changes to a minimum, and avoid excessive agitation, in order to avoid felting (though felting on purpose is another option that's well worth exploring).

The right type of dye to use for cashmere is acid dye. Acid dyes are the best dyes for all animal fibers, such as cashmere, wool, and angora (and, oddly, for nylon as well, but no other synthetic material). Acid dyes can be used with various helper chemicals, the most prominent of which is a mild acid, such as white vinegar. Acid dye works best when applied by heating the fabric together with the dye.

The best way to apply acid dye to cashmere or another protein fiber is in an enormous cooking pot, one large enough for the fabric to move in freely, and yet not made of a cheap material like aluminum, since aluminum reacts with auxiliary dye chemicals such as vinegar; a dyeing pot should be made of either stainless steel or unchipped enamel. You should not plan to reuse a dyeing pot for cooking, so it's an awfully great investment for an occasional dyer. However, it is possible to use acid dye at a lower temperature, such as that found in a washing machine (with the water heater turned up high, if possible), or even to improvise a suitable dyeing pot by pouring boiling water into a large, inexpensive, but water-tight styrofoam cooler.

There are many different acid dyes in the world. Even food colorings are types of acid dyes, which can actually be used as textile dyes, on protein fibers, but they are not as good as other types of acid dyes, and I do not recommend them for your project because the colors they produce are not always dark enough, and they tend to wash out easily. The acid dyes I most recommend for your purposes are the Lanaset dyes (see "Lanaset Dyes: A Range of Reactive and Acid dyes for Protein Fibers") and the WashFast Acid Dyes. Another good line of dyes is the Jacquard Acid Dyes. All of these dyes are best purchased by mail-order. You can buy dyes locally that will work, on cashmere, such as Rit All Purpose Tint and Dye, which contains some acid dyes in its mixtures, but the colors are not as predictable and the performance of the dye is generally inferior to the mail-order dyes. When you choose a dye, find a good recipe that is specifically written for that type of dye, so that you can follow it closely. Following a good recipe carefully is the way to ensure success in dyeing.

A bright red material, such as the cashmere you have now, cannot to dyed to just any color. Since dye is transparent, each color you apply will continue to show the former color through it. Red is a very intense color, and can be turned only to colors that contain it. You have a choice of darkening your red to a maroon dark red color, or overdyeing it with green or brown to produce various shades of brown (similar to what you'd get if you combined that shade of watercolor paint with that shade of green or brown paint). If you overdye your red with blue, you will get a purple, though it will be a subtler, darker purple than would be possible if you started with a bright bluish pink. If you overdye with black, you will get a darker red, or, if you use enough black, and are very careful to follow your recipe correctly, you can end up with black cashmere. Colors that are not possible include any lighter color, such as yellow, beige or orange, as well as any other color which does not contain red, colors such as green or blue. Sicne you're thinking of dyeing your cashmere brown, thise project is very doable. Some shades of brown do not contain enough red to be reachable for you, however, in which case you would need to remove some of the color first.

You probably already know that you must never apply household bleach to cashmere, wool, or any other animal fiber, or indeed to most synthetic fibers, but there are other color removing chemicals that may be safely used on protein fibers. (See "What chemicals can be used to remove dye?".) The best color remover for removing dye from protein fibers is the one found in the products Formosul and Rongalit, because it can be used at a low pH, which is kinder to proteins than anything that is used at a high pH. (Here is a link to ProChem's instructions for using Formusol [PDF].) If you use formosul on your red cashmere, chances are good (though never guaranteed) that enough of the color will be removed to allow you a much wider choice of colors, when you redye it. However, this is enough trouble that you may prefer to choose a shade of brown that does not require you to remove the existing color first.

Good mail-order sources for acid dyes and dyeing chemicals in Canada include G&S Dye and Maiwa Handprints; they sell different ranges of products, so take a look at both. For links and contact information for these and other retailers of supplies for dyeing, see my page, "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World".

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Will it work to dye rayon lace and cotton fabric after sewing them together?

Name: Bette

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Country or region: U.S.

Message: Hello -- I hope you might be able to give me some advice regarding a project I am embarking upon. I am cutting cotton fabric into strips and serging all the edges. On the sides and down the middle of these I am sewing different rayon venice laces. Then I am taking the finished product (I am planning to make about 50) and dyeing each one. The scarves will each be a single color but I am planning to create many different colors.

Here are my questions: Is it going to work creating the scarf first and then dyeing it or will the rayon and cotton look different? It seems like it will be easier sewing the scarf and then prewashing it. Will this work considering I am using two different materials? And lastly, what do you think would be the simplest dying method to use?

Rayon will dye a very similar color to cotton, assuming that it's viscose rayon (which is what we usually mean by "rayon" in the US), and not rayon acetate. I think it will be close enough to be no problem. Often, rayon will appear to take more of the dye, resulting in a somewhat darker value than cotton, but the same hue, so it still "matches"; usually, the different color intensities look good together. Mercerized cotton dyes more intensely than unmercerized cotton does, so the color you get is closer to that of rayon.

However, watch out for the thread you are serging with. Most sewing thread is made of polyester, which will not take the dye at all. I don't know about serger thread. Be certain that your serger thread is made of cotton, or of cotton-wrapped polyester, so that it will take the dye, too.

It would be wise to test-dye a snippet of the lace as soon as possible, to make sure that it is made of the dyeable material that you think it is.

Another issue is shrinkage. It would be terrible if one material shrank considerably more than they other, after you sewed them together. It might be a good idea to pre-shrink both your cotton and your lace, to make sure that they do not shrink differently after they are sewn together.

What is the simplest dyeing method to use? If you are interested in a multi-colored effect, then low water immersion is by far the easiest technique; it's easier than any other form of dyeing. See "How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing". If you want a single solid color, then washing machine dyeing is the easiest: see "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?". Washing machine dyeing would be wasteful of materials if you're dyeing only one or two scarves in each color, though. You can use a five-gallon bucket to use the same method, scaled down appropriately, but then you have to stir by hand. See the link on the above page to Dharma Trading Company's "The Vat (Washing Machine, Tub, Bucket) Dye Method," or see PRO Chemical & Dye's instructions for "Immersion Dyeing using PRO MX Reactive Dyes".

I strongly recommend fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dyes, for dyeing both cotton and rayon. Read through the recipes in advance to see the other ingredients that you will need.

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Which dye can I use to make a cotton/acrlic sweater black again?

Name: Tammie

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Dye polyester and poly/cotton blends

Country or region: Alabama, USA

Message: I have a black sweater that faded yesterday when I washed it. It is 55% cotton and 45% acrylic. Which dye can I use to make it black again?

You won't be able to do this, unless it's only the cotton fibers whose dye ran, because you can't dye acrylic black.

Dyeing the cotton fibers in your sweater black is an easy task. The best dyes to use for this would be fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, which is easy to use at room temperature, using washing soda to set the dye.

However, dyeing acrylic black is completely impractical, at home. Acrylic cannot be dyed with any dye that works on cotton. The only two types of dye that will permanently color acrylic are disperse dyes and basic (or cationic) dyes. Disperse dyes work well on acrylic, but they cannot produce dark colors on acrylic, so that won't work for your black sweater. Disperse dyes are good only for pale to medium shades on acrylic, not for black or any other very dark color. However, basic dyes are not a good choice for home dyeing, because some of them are toxic or cause cancer, and they badly stain everything they touch, and they are very difficult to find a source to buy them from, in the small quantities that you'd want.

It could be that only the cotton in your sweater was incorrectly dyed, so that the dye faded. If the acrylic fibers in your sweater are still black, then it will be easy to redye the cotton fibers. Can you see whether there are still some black fibers in your sweater, if you look at it with a magnifying glass? If the acrylic is still black, and only the cotton has faded, then your sweater's problem can be corrected.

First, I would recommend that you try to wash out as much of the poorly-fixed black dye as possible, using hot water, the hotter the better (if the care label indicates that hot water is okay). Soaking in hot water for a while will help with this process. The remnants of the poor dye will otherwise continue to run in the future when you wash it the sweater.

Next, you should buy some good-quality dye. Although the easiest kind of dye to find in the store is all-purpose dye, it is not very good, because it tends to run in the wash, as your sweater already did. You should look for a higher quality dye.

Fiber reactive dye performs much better than all-purpose dyes, on cotton. (Of course, neither all-purpose dye not fiber reactive dye will color acrylic, as they just wash out of the acrylic fiber.) If there's a good good crafts store near you, look for Jacquard Procion MX dye, or Dylon Permanent Dye, or Tulip Permanent dye, all of which contain fiber reactive dye. You can also buy Procion MX dye by mail-order; serious dyers usually do, because the prices and the color selection are much better. (For where to buy by mail-order, see my page, "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World".) Do not buy Rit all-purpose dye, unless you are also going to buy a commercial dye fixative such as Retayne, which is unfortunately very hard to find except by mail-order. If you buy Dylon Permanent Dye or Tulip Permanent dye, you may need to use two or three packets of dye, depending on the dry weight of your sweater. Follow the instructions on the package carefully.

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Friday, November 12, 2010

Interested in dying a nylon item black

Name: Ryan

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Washfast Acid dyes
at Paradise Fibers

Washfast Acid dyes
Also known as Nylomine dyes, excellent for use on nylon. One ounce of dye will dye six pounds of fiber!

Country or region: Wisconsin, USA

Message: Hello, I am interested in dying a nylon item black. I read your article on disperse dying for nylon, but I don't think I could accomplish that myself. Could I pay you to dye the item black for me?

Three points for you.

First, I recommend that you use acid dyes for nylon, rather than disperse dyes. Nylon dyes well with both classes of dyes, but acid dyes are more wash-resistant on nylon, and are more widely available for purchase.

It's easy to dye nylon garments in the washing machine, using Jacquard Products' instructions for using acid dyes in the washing machine, with hot tap water. (See my page, "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?".) It's even possible to use an all-purpose dye, such as Rit, though the Jacquard dyes are higher quality, and the Jacquard Recipe is greatly superior to the Rit dye recipe since it calls for vinegar, which meets the acid dye's requirement for an acid. (Dyeing nylon with all-purpose dye requires an acid such as vinegar, in contrast to cotton dyeing, which does not benefit at all from vinegar.) Note that dyeing anything black requires at least twice as much dye powder as any other color, possibly four times as much.

Second, I am not able to take on this project for you myself, but there are other dyers who can. To find a garment redyer, see the top section of my page, "Where can I find someone to dye my clothing for me?". Contact True Color Fabric Dyeing, Dye Pro Services, Spectrum Custom Fabric Dyeing, or Metro Dyeing Service. In some cases you can find special pricing for dyeing garments black.

Third, a warning: not all nylon clothing is prepared for dyeing. If the nylon still contains spinning or weaving oils, or other finishes applied during manufacture, these substances may repel dye, resulting in splotchy and uneven dyeing. The best results come from dyeing nylon garments that are sold as "PFP" (Prepared For Printing), because they are free of dye-blocking treatments. Always prewash anything you are going to dye with detergent and the hottest water that the garment can tolerate, in the hope of removing any problems. Unfortunately, in some cases, they may fail to be removed. Your nylon will probably dye just fine, but you have to be prepared for a possible failure, regardless of who does the actual dyeing.

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Sunday, November 07, 2010

Thinking the kit maybe the best option to start Name: Michelle

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Country or region: South Australia

Message: What an amazing, detailed and informative website....thank you! I'm a mother of three girls, never tie dyed however eager and willing to give it a go for christmas gifts this year. Feeling a lot more confident having looked at your website. Thinking the kit maybe the best option to start.

A tie-dyeing kit is a great way to start. Just be sure not to buy the Rit brand tie-dyeing kit, if that is even available in your area, since it contains the wrong kind of dye for easy multicolor tie-dyeing. All of the other brands of tie-dyeing kits I've seen have been pretty good.

When you buy clothes to dye, make sure that they are 100% cotton (or viscose rayon or hemp, or other plant fiber, or 100% silk), and that they are not labeled as being stain-resistant or water-resistant. Prewash everything before you dye it. Given that, you almost can't go wrong, as long as you follow the instructions. Although you will get better at tie-dyeing with practice, even your first efforts will be worthwhile.

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