Name: Shannon

Country or region: USA

Message: I am trying to tie dye a shirt. How can I use 3 different colors and make it come out right?

The key is to buy the right type of dye. Don't even try to do this with any sort of all-purpose dye, such as Rit dye, because the colors will run and blend together when you wash the shirt. The right kind of dye is called fiber reactive dye or Procion MX dye.

If you use the right kind of dye, along with soda ash or washing soda as a dye fixative, the dye will react with the fiber in your shirt and bond permanently. After allowing at least overnight for the dye reaction to take place, in a warm place (70°F or warmer), you can remove any excess unattached dye by washing in very hot water, leaving your colors distinct, clear, and bright.

You must also choose a good shirt for dyeing. It should not contain any polyester, and it should not be stain resistant. It's easy to find 100% cotton or rayon shirts for dyeing. Just be sure to check the label for fiber content, and to make sure there is no stain-resistant or water-resistant coating.

Good tie-dyeing kits are usually pretty easy to find. Avoid the Rit tie-dyeing kits, since they contain the wrong type of dye for tie-dyeing. Brands of tie-dyeing kits other than Rit are pretty reliable, but don't confuse them with fabric paints, which are not as good as dyes. Many crafts stores sell Jacquard Products' kits, including a large kit or a smaller "Funky Groovy" tie dyeing kit. These kits are the best. Tie-dyeing kits made by Rainbow Rock, Tulip, or Dylon are usually very good. Tie-dyeing kits normally contain three colors, yellow,  turquoise, and magenta, because these are the brightest colors and they can be mixed to make any other color. Some tie-dyeing kits contain a different selection of colors, which work well, too, for a slightly different effect.

Serious tie-dyers usually mail-order their dyes from a good dye supplier, such as PRO Chemical & Dye or Dharma Trading Company. The prices are better, and the selection of different dye colors is much larger. For contact information and many more company names, see my page of Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World. These companies also sell their own tie-dyeing kits, which are very similar to the Jacquard kit. All of these are good choices. You will probably want to buy a kit for your first attempts at dyeing.

If you are using the right kind of dye, all you have to do is soak the shirt in water with soda ash or washing soda dissolved in it (unless you have one of the kits in which the soda ash is already mixed with the dye powder), then squirt the dye onto the shirt using the plastic bottles that were included in your kit. You can tie the shirt first to make different designs, or just drip the different colors on in different places. Cover the shirts with plastic wrap to keep them moist overnight, then, the next day, wash them first in cool water, and then at least twice in very hot water, preferably 140°F or above. That's all there is to it.

If you've ever tried to tie-dye using all-purpose dyes, you will be amazed at how much better the results are when you use fiber reactive Procion MX dyes. The dyeing itself is easier, since no heating is necessary; the colors are much prettier and brighter; and the dyes stay bright on your shirt for years longer.

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Country: Canada

Message: Hello I'm wondering how I might go about dying polyester faux fur- specifically, they are knee-high boot covers, quite thick, and white. I understand the choices are limited. Is it possible that hair dye might do the job? Or will the chemicals fry the fabric? 

No, hair dye simply will not work well enough on polyester. As a general rule, hair dyes are designed to bond to natural, protein-based fibers (including hair, of course), and will therefore bind only to similar fibers, such as wool, silk, and surprisingly, nylon, but never to polyester.  The problem is not that they might fry the fabric, but simply that they won't color it at all acceptably.

Fortunately, there are much better alternatives for you. You will have to use a special polyester dye, called disperse dye. Disperse dye is the only type of dye that will permanently bind to polyester. In some cases, non-permanent dyes may stain polyester to a pale color; for example, by boiling polyester in strong coffee, you can produce a light brownish beige (along with a very strong coffee smell that clings to the fabric for a long time). For longer-lasting and more intense colors, you will get far better results with disperse dye.

You can buy disperse dye in several different forms. One form can be boiled with the polyester to color it a single solid color. This is the form found in Jacquard Products' "iDye Poly", as well as the disperse dyes sold by Aljo dyes in New York and PRO Chemical & Dye in Massachusetts. In Canada, you can mail-order iDye Poly from G&S Dye, in Toronto. Unfortunately, this dye requires high heat to transfer to polyester, though some other synthetic fibers will take the dye at more moderate heat. You cannot dye polyester in the washing machine, because polyester dyeing requires boiling temperatures.

Disperse dye is also available in the form of fabric transfer crayons. (See "Iron-on Fabric Crayons for Synthetic Fibers". ) You can often buy these at fabric stores and crafts stores. The way you use them is very different from the iDye Poly: you color with them onto paper, then iron them on to your fabric. The high heat of the iron works even better than the boiling temperature of the iDye Poly dyebath. This method is great when you want to paint different parts of your project in different colors. It may also be easier on your fabric than boiling it for an hour.

Fabric transfer paints are disperse dyes in powder form that are mixed with water to make paint, painted onto paper, and then transferred with a hot iron, just the like fabric transfer crayons. As with the crayons, you will find the original colors to appear to be rather dull, but the colors that appear on the polyester as you iron are very intense.

From your description, it seems likely that your best choice will be to dye with a boiling water dyebath containing iDye Poly or another brand of disperse dye powder, along with a color enhancing chemical that is needed only for polyester, not other synthetic fibers. The color-enhancing chemical is included in iDye Poly in a separate little pouch, and is purchased separately from the disperse dye, as a dye carrier chemical, from PRO Chemical & Dye. It helps considerably in reaching the desired color on polyester. You will need a very large cooking pot in which you can submerge the boot covers entirely while boiling them in the dye. Unlike other dyes, iDye Poly can be used with an aluminum pot, which is cheaper than the stainless steel or enamel pots required for other dyes (though those are also fine for iDye Poly). You will need to cook the dyebath at a high enough heat that you see bubbles at the edges of the water. I hope that boiling does not alter the texture of the fake fur in your boot covers.

One last, very important point: dyeing will be impossible if your boot covers have been treated with any kind of water-proofing or stain resistance. These surface finishes repel all kinds of dye, as well as water and stains. I hope that this will not be a problem for you.

By the way, do not buy plain iDye, which is a direct dye for use on natural fibers only. To dye polyester, you must use iDye Poly, instead, or any other form of disperse dye. iDye Poly is a completely different kind of dye from iDye.

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Name: Jan

Message: We are trying to resist the outline of a giraffe without drawing or painting a hard outline, so we can freehand paint inside on the giraffe with colorful stripes.  We need another way to do this OR, we need to color the resist so we can see the outline better. We are using Versatex screen printing ink to paint the stripes on the Giraffe, and Jacquard Water Based Resist to attempt the outline. An additional problem is that since we have to heat set the Versatex, it is also setting the resist, which does not wash out. Is there an indelible dye we can add to the resist, and how to get the resist out after heat setting the Versatex. 

I think that almost any water-based resist will risk becoming heat-set when you set the Versatex ink. (One exception is another brand of water-based resist called Presist, which is supposed to wash out easily even after being heat-set by ironing.) Instead, I would suggest that you try an entirely different type of resist: use wax. 

Batik wax is a mixture of beeswax, or a synthetic form of wax called microcrystalline wax which is often used as a substitute, with paraffin, which causes the wax to crack, for the characteristic "crackle" lines in batik. Beeswax, when used alone, will resist cracking. Any of these waxes should resist the ink quite well. Be sure that the fabric is absolutely dry before you apply the wax. If you draw lines with a pencil on top of the fabric and completely cover them with wax, they should be protected from the printing ink by the wax, and, ultimately, wash out, after the ink is heat-set and the wax is completely removed. You can apply the wax with a natural-bristle paint brush or with an applicator called a tjanting. After applying the ink, while it's still wet, you could wipe any excess ink off of the surface of the wax.

After you allow the Versatex ink to dry, you can remove the wax and set the ink in one step, by ironing. Personally, I find it a fussy task to try to remove all of the wax by ironing, but you can certainly remove part of it, and you might find it easy enough to complete the wax removal with the iron. You will need to use plenty of absorbent paper on each side of your fabric, to absorb the wax, when you iron the fabric. Use unprinted newsprint paper right next to the fabric, but you can additionally pad this with printed newspapers, as long as the ink is not touching your art work. Change the paper whenever it becomes saturated with melted wax. After removing the bulk of the wax, follow the manufacturers' instructions to be sure that you have provided adequate heat to set the binders in the Versatex Screen Printing Ink. After the ink is fully heat set, you can remove any remaining wax by additional ironing, or by immersing it in boiling water so that the melted wax rises to the top; I prefer to do this with some soap (not detergent) in the water, and I allow the water to cool so that the floating wax solidifies and can be removed without getting into the fabric again.

An alternative to batik wax or beeswax is the hardest grade of soy wax, which is sold for use in making pillar-type candles. Soy wax can be removed by washing it, with lots of detergent to suspend the wax, in very hot water. However, it should respond similarly to beeswax or batik wax when melted with an iron. Soy wax is not quite as good at holding a crisp line when immersed in water or a dyebath, but its ease in removal often entirely makes up for this deficiency, depending on the specific project.

If you want to continue to use a water-based resist instead of wax, you can use almost any fabric paint. Look for colored resists, such as colored water-based "guttas", sold by dye suppliers. (Real gutta is not soluble in water, but instead in organic solvents such as gasoline.) You should heat-set the fabric paint, to make it permanent, before using it as a resist. It will stay in place. Dyes will be completely resisted by any fabric paint that has been heat-set. However, I do not know how the Versatex Screen Printing Ink will act on top of fabric paint. It may flow right on top of it and stay there.

It is possible to color some water-soluble resists by adding a bit of fabric dye. Since you do not want the fabric to be colored, but want to be able to see your water-soluble resist more easily, you could try adding a very small amount of food coloring, which does not permanently dye cotton or rayon. Note, however, that food coloring will dye nylon, silk, and wool, under the right circumstances.

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Name: Teresa

Region: Alaska

Message: What are the after care instructions for taking care of a freshly tie-dyed t-shirt?  It's been in a zip-loc bag since it's been done.  I took it out to dry last night,  it's not really dry yet.  Can I wash it like that?

If your shirt was dyed with Procion MX dyes, which are the type of fiber reactive dyes used in most tie-dyeing kits (but not the Rit tie-dyeing kit!), then the next step is easy. It does not matter whether the shirt is still damp. There is no requirement to dry the shirt before washing; in fact, the longer the shirt can stay damp during the dye reaction, the better, preferably no less than overnight.

First, wash it in cool water, either one cycle in the washing machine, without detergent, or rinse it out in the sink with cool water until the water's not very dark. If your shirts have been sitting in a warm place (70°F or warmer) overnight, or longer, then it will be safe to dump any number of shirts into the washing machine together for the first rinse, if this is more convenient for you, and you can untie the shirt before beginning to rinse. The first rinsing step is to remove the soda ash and any other auxiliary chemicals, plus some of the excess dye. Second, wash in the hottest water available, either in the washing machine or by soaking it, with detergent. Ideally your water should be very hot, 140°F or higher; some hand dyers use nearly boiling water, since it is more efficient. Hot water works much better than warm water for removing the last bits of unattached excess dye. It's typical to have to repeat the hot water wash twice, if you're not using extremely hot water.

If your shirt has been at a temperature below 70°F, then I recommend that you wait to rinse it. Keep the freshly dyed shirt damp (wrap it in plastic again) in a warm place overnight, before rinsing it out. The dyes do not work at all well under 70°F (that's 21°C). It's okay if the shirts are warmer than 70°F. Under 70°F, some of the colors will work, but others, particularly turquoise, will tend to be very pale.

If your shirt was dyed with all-purpose dye, such as Rit dye or Tintex dye, then the dye will not stay bright very long, and dark colors will tend to transfer onto lighter colors, even in the first washing. Thoroughly rinse a Rit-dyed shirt separately, in cool water, before untying it, and then treat it with some Retayne or another commercial dye fixative (not salt or vinegar), preferably again before untying it, in order to increase washfastness. Never use warm or hot water to wash Rit-dyed clothing. I do not recommend the use of all purpose dyes like Rit for tie-dyeing.

There are many good brands of tie-dyeing kits. The best ones are the Jacquard Products brand kits, including the Funky Groovy Tie-dyeing kit, and the kits sold by dye specialists such as PRO Chemical & Dye or Dharma Trading Company. You can also get good results with Tulip, Rainbow Rock, and Dylon tie-dyeing kits. Just avoid any sort of all-purpose dyes, such as Rit or Tintex dye, because they do not work well for tie-dyeing.

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Country or region: USA

Message: I have a question about dyeing chenille yarn.  I recently acquired some chenille machine yarn.  I was not sure what the fiber was and just out of curiousity threw it in when I was dyeing some wool.  It turned out that the color took really well and did not appear to bleed.  When I took the yarn to my local yarn shop, the owner thought that it was rayon chenille.  From what I have read every where, food color is not supposed to dye rayon.  I have since dyed multiple skeins of the chenille with food color.  I have had great success but just recently had a skein that is bleeding.

So my question is this - is it possible that this is rayon?  Could I dye rayon with food color and not have it bleed?  If it is rayon, is there any way to make certain that it will not bleed if I continue this process - is the degree of heat or acidity necessary significantly different for rayon vs. wool.  The other thought I had with this is that it was a problem with red dye.  I seem to have more issues with red bleeding (in wool) than any other color.

Your thoughts on this would be most appreciated.  


My first thought is that your chenille yarn might be made of nylon. Although it is synthetic, nylon, like wool, is a polyamide, and it dyes very well with acid dyes, especially in the presence of a mild acid such as you use in dyeing wool. (See "About Acid Dyes" and "How to dye nylon".)

The best thing to do to identify your fiber now would be to try a burn test of a small test piece of yarn, taking care to do so safely. Different fibers produce different odors and different ashes when burned. Rayon is a form of cellulose, so it smells like burning paper. Wool smells like burning hair. Nylon melts instead of burning well, and it smells like celery or burning plastic. Take a look at Griffin Dyeworks' Burn Test page, and Ditzy Prints' Fiber Burn Chart, for instructions and for help in interpreting your results. 

There are some acid dyes which can also color cellulose fibers, such as rayon; when they do so, they are acting as direct dyes. (See "About Direct Dyes".) Direct dyes are not as washfast on rayon as another type of dye, known as fiber reactive dye, but their washfastness can be improved by the use of a commercial dye fixative, such as Retayne. (Vinegar and salt do not work for this.) It's possible that you have rayon chenille and that you just happened to be using an acid dye that works pretty well as a direct dye. However, food coloring performs quite poorly on rayon and other plant fibers. (See "Using Food Coloring as a Textile Dye for Protein Fibers".) 

If you find that you do have a rayon yarn to dye, I strongly recommend you obtain a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX, or Drimarene K, or Sabracron F (also known as Novacron F). The results are much more washfast than other types of dye on cellulose. (See "About Fiber Reactive Dyes".)

Red food coloring is widely known for bleeding badly when it is used as a textile dye. The two red dyes that are used as food colorings, allura red and erythrosine, were chosen for their relative safety when eaten, not for their ability to work well on yarn. You will get much better results if you use a high quality acid dye, instead of food coloring. Food coloring is fun to use on wool and nylon, and it has great advantages for working with children, or for using your good cooking pots to dye in (which you should never do with dyes other than food colorings), but you can't expect it to be the best dye for yarn. 

For better results than you can get from food coloring, I recommend other acid dyes, such as the acid dye Polar Red, and another acid dye, WashFast Acid Magenta. These dyes work very well on both wool and nylon. The most popular dyes for hand dyers in the US are the Lanaset dyes, which are extremely resistant to fading, even if washed in hot water, and the WashFast Acid dyes. Be sure to find a good recipe for your specific dye type, as the best conditions for dyeing vary somewhat from one type of dye to another.

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Name: Bill

Country: USA

Message: I'm having a sleepover/birthday party for my 11 year old daughter and four of her friends, and wanted to do a tie dying activity.  Any suggestions?  I'm hoping to do something without much prep time or require too many steps.  Thanks.

Tie-dyeing is a good activity, if you buy a good tie-dyeing kit. It can be messy, so I would recommend that you do the dyeing outside. 

Buying a good kit is key. Do not buy the Rit tie-dye kit, because it contains inferior dyes, and Rit dyes are harder to use since they require very hot water. The best kit you can find at most local crafts stores is the Jacquard Products kit, or a smaller kit by the same company, called the Funky Groovy tie-dyeing kit. Other good brands for tie-dyeing kits include Tulip, Rainbow Rock, and Dylon. If possible, check for an expiration date on the kit, as I have heard of some crafts stores selling expired Tulip brand kits. You can also order excellent kits and blank clothing to dye from companies such as Dharma Trading Company or PRO Chemical & Dye.

It takes some time for dye to fully react with the fiber. For most parties, we have the kids tie the garment, dump it into a bucket of washing soda and water to soak for five minutes or so, then squeeze out excess water, using gloved hands, and apply the dye with squirt bottles. Then we let the dye react with the fabric overnight. For parties that are not sleepovers, we pop each garment into a separate ziplock plastic bag, and send it home with the kids with instructions to keep it in a warm place (70°F or warmer) overnight, then wash out the next day, first in cool water and then with hot water.

Since you're doing a sleepover, you can choose between doing it the same way, or instead washing the shirts out yourself in the washing machine in the morning. If you keep the shirts in a warm place overnight, they are then safe to all wash together in one washing machine load. One load on the cold setting, then twice on the hot setting. Machine or line dry.

Be sure to buy only 100% cotton shirts, and be sure that they are not labeled "stain resistant". If you buy 50% cotton/50% polyester shirts, the final colors will be paler, but that can work, if you know to expect it. Do not try to tie-dye 100% polyester clothing. Rayon is good for tie-dyeing.

Another good project for a party is decorating t-shirts, or other white clothing, such as hats, with good fabric markers. Jacquard's Tee Juice Markers are popular. You can use either 100% cotton or 50% cotton/50% polyester. You can see a huge range of what other people have done with fabric markers on the Tee Juice website.

Whether you use dye or markers, it's a good idea to wash all the clothing first in hot water, to remove any finishes or invisible stains that might interfere with getting the dye or marker paint to bond to the fabric.

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Name: Rick

Country: usa

Message: A lot of info...thanks, but I have one question. I am using bamboo that has been colored by disperse dyes for the manufacture of bird toys. birds will chew on this and my concern is the toxic effect on them or is there no worry? thanks for your help

That's a difficult question to answer. I can't imagine why they're using disperse dyes on wood, because disperse dye is for polyester and other synthetic fibers, not for cellulose materials like cotton and wood. It will not bond to the wood, so it might leach out when chewed upon. 

None of the disperse dyes have been tested for safety by human or animal consumption, as far as I know. The only dyes which have been tested for safety in humans are food colorings and the colorings used for drugs and cosmetics. See my page, "Using Food Coloring as a Textile Dye for Protein Fibers", although of course wood is not a protein fiber; it's made of cellulose and lignen. My page on food colorings does contain relevant information, nonetheless. Food colorings will stain wood and other cellulose-containing substances, such as cotton or linen, only temporarily, which means that they will wash out when it gets wet; the same should be true of disperse dyes, since they do not bind to the molecules in the wood.

You can find instructions online for coloring your own wooden bird toys with food coloring that is known to be safe for humans to eat. For example, on The ToyMaker's Make Your Own Bird Toys page, a contributer named Diane Trifilo suggests soaking wood pieces in unsweetened Jello or food coloring overnight, or, for bolder colors, using cake coloring paste.  A similar method would be to soak in a paste made by mixing unsweetened Kool-aid with a little water. In each of these cases, the dye is only temporarily staining the wood, but that's all right for a material that will not be washed and will not be allowed to contact clothing or furnishings when damp.

There are also instructions for using children's non-toxic tempera paints for the same purpose. Note that this is significantly less safe. The "non-toxic" designation assures you that there will be no sudden acute poisoning, as from lead or arsenic (unless the product was mislabeled, as occurs only rarely), but there is no assurance that repeated oral consumption is safe from producing chronic health problems. It's probably okay to use the paint for bird toys, but it's not as certain to be safe as using the safety-tested food colorings. Food colorings undergo a vastly more strict testing process, including large-scale feeding studies; non-toxic paints do not undergo any similar testing process and should not be considered safe for human consumption, at least. Some may contain small amounts of contamination with substances that are entirely unsuitable for use on items that will be chewed upon.

Many disperse dyes are not particularly toxic; however, none of them, as far as I know, have ever been tested for safety when consumed as a food. Therefore, I would consider them to be less safe for bird toys than FDA-approved food colorings. Some disperse dyes are considered to be toxic, but these are less likely to be in use. For example, Disperse Blue 34 is supposed to be a safe alternative for the more toxic Disperse Blue 1 [PDF], Disperse Red 334 safer than Disperse Red 151, and Disperse Yellow 26 safer than Disperse Yellow 7.  On the other hand, I've never heard of birds dying as the result of dyes in their toys or food. I cannot tell you that chewing on disperse dyes will harm your birds.

If you are making your own wooden bird toys, I would advise you to use food colorings as your dyes, simply because we can have much more confidence that it is safe. I do not know whether you should be wary of using the bird toys you have now. I can't tell you whether using the commercially available bird toys that are dyed with disperse dyes will pose any risk of harm to your birds. If experienced bird owners tell you that their birds have played with these toys for years without harm, then you shouldn't worry much. Only if these dyes are an innovation, different from the dyes that long-time bird owners have experience with, would I be really concerned.

Note that natural dyes, also known as vegetable dyes, are similar to food colorings, in that they will not, in most cases, bond to a cellulose fiber. When natural dyes are used to dye cotton, they must be used with mordants of varying degrees of toxicity, or the dyes will not be resistant to washing out. This makes most natural dyes less safe than synthetic dyes for dyeing garments for infants who chew on their clothing. However, since you are not concerned with whether your wooden toys will retain their color after washing, you can stain them temporarily with natural dyes. Some natural dyes are somewhat hazardous, but some others are safe. Among the safe natural dyes that are appropriate for experimentation for suitability for bird toys without mordants are turmeric (yellow), cochineal (red), and walnut husks (brown). 

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Name: Betsy

Region: midwest US

Message:   I have taken on a fix-it project with the hopes that I can.
    What's been done so far:
      1) 8 yds. of silk/rayon--designs devored onto
      2) Dyed with Procion MX Mist Grey #139--Red Spots(dye not mixed
          well).
      3) Thioxed
      4) Re-dyed with Mist Grey---(dye mixed but  not allowed to sit)
         dye strained (all red strained out, apparently) and the
         result is Ugly green. 
Now, my turn!
      5) Thioxed--the result is a pale yellow.
      6) Sample, sample, sample, sample---How to get grey?
      7) The best so far is 1/4 Eggplant and 3/4 Better Black= sort 
         of a grey with greenish tinge and acceptable to the artist
         but not perfect. Immersion-dyed but also tried chemical 
         water and painted it on with no difference.
QUESTIONS:
  Is Procion MX the best way to go? 
  Should I try Rit, Pro H or? 
  Should I tell them to go with a navy or dark color other than grey?

Procion MX fiber reactive dyes are as good as any, for this project. If you overdye your "grey with greenish tinge" with a light reddish color, it should correct the greenish tinge, unless you overdo it. If what you have now is a pale yellow, then what you want is a mixture of a light purple, to correct the yellow, plus a gray mixture, to make it darker.

Is your goal to have the rayon and the silk fibers in the devoré fabric end up the same color as each other, or different? In many cases people want a contrasting color effect, but it sounds like in this case a single solid color is desired.

For most purposes, I do not generally recommend an all-purpose dye, such as Rit, because the colors are not always predictable, and because the dyes contained in the mix tend to be very poorly washfast. However, the washfastness problem can be solved by using a commercial dye fixative such as Retayne, or by marking the fabric "dry clean only". I prefer to use the fixative, although it tends to reduce lightfastness somewhat. All-purpose dye blends are one way to get a protein fiber, such as silk, and a cellulose fiber, such as rayon, to come out more-or-less the same color.

Actually, direct dyes (the half of the all-purpose blend that colors rayon) and fiber reactive dyes both dye silk as well as rayon. However, for any type of dye, all of the pre-mixed dye colors tend to produce different hues on one fiber than on another. The devoréed sections of the fabric show only the silk backing, while the plush portion of the fiber is composed of rayon. It can be challenging to get an exact match in the two different fibers, unless the color you want exists in a single-hue unmixed dye of any type. For most dyes, there are limitations on available colors, unless you mix two or more of the other colors together. In particular, green, black, and gray colors are relatively rare among the unmixed dyes. There are no available unmixed greens, blacks, or grays among the Procion MX line (see "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?", and there are no unmixed blacks or grays among the Procion H dyes that are available to hand dyers in the US.

Procion H dye is fine, but not better than Procion MX dye; it's harder to get, and, since it's a hot-water dye, the requirement for steaming makes it more trouble to use. The Remazol dye line sold by PRO Chemical & Dye does include a single-hue black, which is kind of blueish, but the Jacquard Vinyl Sulfone dyes substitute a mixture for their black dye of the same class. You can also get this dye from Joann's fabric stores in the form of Dylon Permanent Black.

Most retailers who sell Procion MX dyes do not include any premixed Procion MX dyes that are standardized in order to produce the desired color on silk. There is, in fact, only one premixed Procion MX type dye anywhere that is designed for use on silk. All of the premixed Procion MX colors will work well on silk, but the color you get may be quite different from the expected color. The premixed colors can produce wonderful contrasting colors on silk/rayon devoré. The single-hue, unmixed Procion MX dyes produce pretty much the same color on any fiber, though sometimes a little lighter or darker. There is one premixed color of Procion MX dyes that is standardized for use on silk, rather than on cotton, the PRO MX Silk Black 610 from PRO Chemical & Dye, but it should produce an off color when used on rayon, which is more like cotton. I would recommend it if you were dyeing only silk, but not for dyeing silk/rayon devoré a single color.

What I would do in your situation, if trying to get a single color on the "grey with greenish tinge" piece, is try dyeing the piece a light or medium pink, to cover up the greenish tinge, using a single-hue Procion MX dye, either red MX-5B, red MX-8B, or rubine MX-B. If that doesn't work or if it seems like too much trouble (after having spent so much time on it already!), I'd use a single-hue Procion MX navy blue dye, not a mixture such as Strong Navy or Navy Blue MX-4RD, which would tend to look different on silk than on rayon, but instead either blue MX-2G (sold by anyone who sells Procion dyes) or blue MX-4GD (sold by ProChem). Use "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?" as a guide in selecting single-hue dyes, which will behave more predictably on different fibers than the premixed colors will. I also have Remazol reactive black 5 on hand, sold by Pro-Chem as Liquid Reactive Black, so I might use that, instead.

If the piece is still yellow — I guess you only did the eggplant/Better Black on a test piece, which is wise — I'd try a test with one of the single-hue navies, or the Remazol black. The result will probably be a bit greenish, depending on the shade of yellow you have now, in which case I'd try a bit of red to correct it.

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Country or region: Iowa, United States

Message: My daughter bought me a colorful purse with fabric flowers from Costa Rica. She was so excited to give it to me and it's beautiful. But I can't use it because it leaves red dye on my pants and even stains my hands. How can I set the dye so it doesn't bleed? Do I use synthrapol?

Synthrapol is just a detergent. It's a good detergent, but any detergent will do, if you wash the purse so that the dye comes out. Hotter water will work better than cool water, for removing unattached dye.

Washing is the best solution, and there's a very good chance it will be sufficient, if you use hot enough water, soak it for a while, and wash it several times if necessary. If only some parts of the purse are red, then you should expect the dye to transfer to the whole purse when you wash it.

There is no very good solution, besides washing, for dye that rubs off when dry. This problem is called crocking, and it's a sign of improper dye application. It can be seen with both natural dyes and synthetic dyes; it's easily avoided by using the proper procedures in applying the dyes.

There is a type of commercial dye fixative, one brand of which is called Retayne, that can be used to improve wetfastness. Retayne and similar products are good for helping to keep most dyes from running while wet, but they do not work to solve dry crocking.

If there are only a few small parts of the purse that are red, then you could try fixing the loose dye in place by painting with an acrylic fabric paint. You could get a matching color of fabric paint, or you could buy some colorless fabric paint extender. Any small particles that are resting on the fabric of the purse when you paint it with the fabric paint should be glued down by the paint's binder. Be sure to heat-set the paint with a hot iron, as instructed by the manufacturer. The paint will alter the way the fabric feels, but a good fabric paint feels much nicer than any non-fabric paint. Look for a thin fabric paint, such as Dye-Na-Flow or Neopaque, at your local crafts store, or order from an online supplier such as Dharma Trading Company, Blick Art Materials or Mister Art.

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