Archives for July, 2011

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Saturday, July 30, 2011

Does it make a difference whether my fabric is nylon or chiffon?

Name: Dorothea

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Dye polyester and poly/cotton blends

Country or region: United States

Message: I have some fabric that I hang around my patio. It's been there 2 years, and has now faded, due to the sun, weather, etc. My question is, I'm not quite sure what type of fabric it is. I think it's nylon, but it could be chiffon. I saw a photo of chiffon on a fabric website and it looks just like what I have. Does it make a difference?

Chiffon is just one of the different weaves in which different fibers can be woven together into cloth; it is a light, sheer fabric. You can have a nylon chiffon fabric, or a silk chiffon, or even a polyester chiffon. All that matters, when you decide to dye a fabric, is what fiber it is made of. It doesn't matter whether it's a chiffon or a taffeta. What matters is whether it's cotton, silk, nylon, or polyester. A dye that will work on one of these fibers will simply not work on some of the others.

The best way to determine the fiber content of a piece of fabric is to check the label, on a garment or on the end of the bolt the fabric is sold on. Since that's not possible in your case, you will have to try to determine the fiber content another way.

I recommend that you use a burn test. Take a small snip of the fabric, and, holding it with some fireproof tongs or tweezers, apply a flame to it, while holding it over a barbecue grill or a large ash-tray, something fireproof. When you apply the flame, see whether the fabric catches fire, or whether it goes out by itself. Notice what sort of odor appears, and watch to see whether the fabric melts to a hard plastic bead, or forms ash, and what color the bead or ash may be. There is a nice clear chart for interpreting your results on the Ditzy Prints web site.

Once you have determined what your fiber is, then you can choose what sort of dye to use. Polyester can be dyed only at very high temperatures, by boiling it with a special polyester dye called disperse dye, or by ironing-on a transfer print made with disperse dye. Nylon can be dyed with disperse dye, too, but it is better and more easily dyed with an entirely different type of dye, called acid dye; if you simmer the fabric with the dye and some vinegar, you can dye nylon with all-purpose dye, as well. Silk can be dyed with acid dyes, as well, or with direct dyes, all-purpose dyes, or fiber reactive dyes. Cotton can be dyed with all-purpose dye or direct dye, but it performs much better when dyed with a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion dye or Dylon Permanent Dye. In every case, it is important to know what fiber your fabric is made from, before you choose what dye and what method of dyeing to use to color it.

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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Name: Paula G.

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Country or region: South Africa

Message: Hello, I don't know whether Synthetic or Faux Fur is nylon or polyester. Please help, then I can go into your site properly. I use the fabric for making Teddy Bears.

Where do you buy it? If you buy it from a fabric store, the end of the bolt should have the fiber content listed on it—that is, if things are done in South Africa the same way that they are done in the US. The manufacturer or retailer should always be able to tell you the fiber content.

The reason why I can't just tell you outright is that there are different fur materials that are made of different fibers. It's always best to find out from the source if possible. If there is no other way to find out, you can snip a small fragment of the material and try a burn test, but it can be difficult to distinguish some synthetics from one another. (See the Ditzy Prints Burn Test Chart.)

A popular natural fiber fleece for making teddy bears is mohair, made from the hair of the Angora goat. It's more expensive than the synthetic alternatives, so a teddy bear made from mohair plush is a luxury item. Since mohair is an animal fiber, it is dyed like wool, using a type of dye called acid dye, named because it is applied with the use of a mild acid such as vinegar. See "About Acid Dyes"

There are fake furs and plush fabrics made of modacrylic, such as Kankalon; others are made of polyester, such as Silky Furry Fleece, or made of nylon, such as Antron fleece. To know what you have, you must consult whatever source sold you the material.

Finding dyes that work on synthetic fur will be much more difficult than finding good dyes for mohair and other natural fibers, in South Africa. As a general rule, the type of dye known as disperse dye will work on almost any synthetic fiber (not counting viscose rayon, which is essentially cellulose, like cotton). Disperse dye is good on acrylic, modacrylic, polyester, acetate, nylon, and other synthetics. You cannot use dyes that work on natural fibers on any of these fibers except for nylon. Nylon and rayon are the only easy-to-dye synthetic fibers. Nylon can be dyed with acid dyes or all-purpose dyes, and viscose rayon can be dyed with fiber reactive dyes, direct dyes, or all-purpose dyes, but other synthetics cannot be dyed with any dye other than disperse dye.

I do not know of any retailer who sells small quantities of disperse dye in South Africa. However, you might be able to find a retailer who sells dyes made by Jacquard Products, in suitably small quantities. The Jacquard Store Locater does not list any specific sources for their iDye Poly in South Africa, but, for South Africa, they say, "Too new to list! Give us a call and we'll make sure you find what you're looking for!". Their telephone number is (707) 433-9577, plus the country code for calling the United States.

Also see the October 10, 2010 entry in my blog, "Where to get dye for teddies in South Africa".

That answer is oriented more toward dyeing natural-fiber teddy bear fleece, rather than synthetic fleeces, because it is so much easier to dye a natural-fiber fleece.

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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Name: Rene

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Country or region: USA

Message: I am doing tye dye with a group of handicapped kids and the only color shirt we could get donated is yellow. Any suggestions on colors to use? It would be greatly appreciated.

Yellow is not a bad choice at all for a base color. Good colors to apply on top of it are fuchsia, red, orange, green, turquoise, blue, navy, brown and black.

I'd advise you to avoid purple, because purple mixes with yellow to make brown, and avoid overlapping red or fuchsia with blue or turquoise, since these mixtures make purple. Fuchsia on yellow makes red, while blue or turquoise on yellow makes green. Green on yellow will make a more yellowish green, while red on yellow makes red-orange.

For very bright colors, place fuchsia, red, and/or orange on one part of the shirt, and blue or green on another part of the shirt, with an undyed yellow section in between.

Please let me encourage you not to use all-purpose dye, such as Rit, for tie-dyeing. It seems inexpensive at first because each box is only about two dollars, but each box contains mostly salt and detergent, with only enough dye for one shirt. In addition, the colors you can get from tie-dyeing with all-purpose dye are dull and last for only a few launderings. A good tie-dyeing kit, in contrast, will color a great many t-shirts; the Jacquard Products tie-dye kit will color at least fifteen adult-sized shirts, and probably twice that many children's shirts. In addition, the good tie-dyeing kits are easier and safer to use, since they do not require hot or boiling water, and the clothes you dye with them stay bright a hundred times longer. This is because they use a much better sort of dye, fiber reactive dye, which is more suitable for tie-dyeing than all-purpose dye is.

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Friday, July 22, 2011

Message: We are a handweaving studio and we wish to order BASIC dyes to dye acrylic hanks.

Name: Joanna

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Country or region: CYPRUS

Message: We are a handweaving studio and we wish to order from you BASIC dyes to dye acrylic hanks. Do you deliver to Cyprus (EU) and do you have an online catalogue of colours to choose from?

I'm afraid I do not sell basic (cationic) dyes. Three US sources I know of that do are Aljo Mfg., in New York, Jacquard Products' new Bulk & Specialty Store, and Standard Dyes.

Aljo's minimum order requirement is as little as 15 grams per dye color, ideal for small-scale hand dyers, while Jacquard Products and Standard Dye require a minimum order size of one pound (454 grams) of each dye color. Larger international dye corporations such as Dystar tend to have minimum order requirements of five kilograms of each color.

I don't know what the international shipping polices of Aljo Mfg., Jacquard Products, or Standard dyes may be. Dystar's office for sales to Cyprus is in Italy .

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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Do you think it would work if I sponged on the bleach like fabric dye?

Name: Chelsie

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Papasan Chair Cushions

Country or region: Texas

Message: I have a large micro suede papasan chair cushion with a cover that isn't removable. It's in an ugly sand color, and I would like to bleach it. I would like it to still be soft, just not so ugly. I'll dye it if I have to, I read about the disperse dyes, but I would rather it be lighter. Is that even possible without ruining the fabric? Do you think it would work if I sponged on the bleach like fabric dye?

No, I think that sponging on bleach would be a bad idea. Microsuede is made from polyester or from a blend of polyester and nylon. Nylon is completely destroyed by the hypochlorite in chlorine bleach. Polyester is not destroyed, but chlorine bleach damages it, giving it an ugly dull yellow color which cannot be removed. Furthermore, bleach is a hazardous substance and must be thoroughly washed out of any material before you use it, which will be difficult or impossible for a large cushion with a non-removable cover.

Disperse dyes aren't a great idea for this project, either, if you can't remove the cover first. They need high heat to be applied, either by boiling the polyester with the disperse dye for half an hour or longer, or by creating iron-on paper transfers using disperse dye crayons or paints. Obviously, boiling the cover will be impossible. Ironing on the transfer design works much better with a hard surface underneath, such as a piece of masonite board; trying to transfer an iron-on design to a cushion will be frustrating. (See "Iron-on Fabric Crayons for Synthetic Fibers".)

There are other dye removal chemicals which are gentler than chlorine bleach, but they would require you to remove the cover and soak it, with the chemicals, in very hot water. (See "What chemicals can be used to remove dye?".)

Really, anything you might want to do to the fabric requires removal of the cover. I don't recommend using fabric paint without first removing the cover from the cushion, but if you want to try, there are instructions on my site: see Scarlet Zebra's Instructions for Painting Upholstered Furniture.

I think you should consider sewing a new cover for the chair cushion. You could buy fabric in the color you like, or buy a dyeable material to color it yourself. There's a Wikihow tutorial available online on how to sew a new cover for a papasan chair. Alternatively, if you don't like to sew, you can simply buy a new cushion for the chair.

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Can I use soda ash to set my Kool-aid dye on a cotton polyester sheet?

Name: Beth

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Country or region: USA

Message: Can I use soda ash to set my koolaid dye on a sheet (cotton polyester) so it would not fade? Or do I have to use fabric paint? What about tempra paints?

No, nothing will set Kool-aid, or any other synthetic food coloring product, on a sheet made of cotton, polyester, or any combination of the two. Kool-aid functions as a textile dye only on protein fibers, including silk and wool, as well as nylon, but never on cotton, and on no synthetic fiber other than nylon. Use Kool-aid to color your sheets only if you are never going to wash them, not even once.

Tempera paints, similarly, cannot be used on sheets that will ever be washed. There is no good way to make tempera paints wash-resistant on fabric. They are intended only for use on materials that will never be cleaned. Tempera paints will leave only a stain, some colors less intensely than others, which will become paler with every trip through the laundry. They will also run onto and spoil anything else washed in the same load of laundry.

Soda ash will not set many types of dye, and it will not set any sort of fabric paint. Soda ash is used to provide alkaline reaction conditions only for fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion dye, which is the best sort of dye for dyeing cotton or cotton-blend sheets. Using Procion dye, or the fiber reactive dye in a good tie-dyeing kit (avoiding the Rit tie-dye kit, which contains the wrong type of dye), will give much better results than using anything else to color your sheets, even though it gives paler colors on cotton/poly blends than on 100% cotton.

The only paint you should use on a cotton/polyester sheet, if you are ever going to wash it, even just once, is paint that is specifically labeled for use on fabrics. Some fabric paints will not adhere well to synthetic fibers such as polyester. All of the fabric paints made by Jacquard Products are good for cotton/poly blends. Use Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint for a thin effect similar to dyes, which will have little effect on the feel of the fabric; use Lumiere fabric paints for good metallic colors, or Neopaque to use a lighter color on top of a darker one.

You can use ordinary artists' acrylic paints on a cotton sheet, but, unlike fabric paints, the result will be stiff and scratchy, though highly diluted paint is less scratchy than paint used full-strength. You can make artists' acrylics feel softer and adhere better to sheet fabric by mixing them with a special product called fabric medium; however, it's difficult to find fabric medium in local shops, and easier to just buy a good fabric paint.

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Friday, July 08, 2011

How to prevent clothing from fading in the wash

Name: Michael

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Sodium Metabisulfite USP/FCC Grade. 3 Lb.

Country or region: Pennsylvania, USA

Message: Hey Paula,

I have just started updating my wardrobe, replacing some of my well-worn and faded shirts, shorts and pants. I stumbled upon your website while researching how to preserve the quality/extend the life of my new garments. So far I've read that adding baking soda, black pepper powder, vinegar or a combination thereof to the wash and/or rinse cycle will help preserve colors and prevent bleeding, but some of the information seems contradictory at best. Reading through your site has answered a lot of my questions, but has created a few as well. :)

- Even though vinegar has no effect on setting dyes, could it possibly prevent colors from bleeding? Or are the functions one in the same?
- Is there ANY benefit to adding baking soda to the wash cycle?
- Are soda ash or any of its alternatives worth pursuing for my purpose? Or are they only viable for manually-died fabrics?
- Am I really just needlessly worrying? Should I just turn garments inside-out prior to washing, wash like colors, use a gentle detergent with cold water, don't leave them in the drier too long and call it a day?

Just so you know, I've already corresponded with G&K labs regarding whether Retayne would be useful for my intended purpose, but its ingredient list has made me second-guess.

I do think you may be needlessly worrying, depending on the methods used by the manufacturers of the clothing you wear. Most of them probably already use a commercial equivalent of Retayne; this is why commercial clothing is now so much less likely to bleed in the wash than it was when I was a child. It eventually does wear off with time, so the dyes ultimately do fade. Washing in cool water is the best way to extend the life of fabric treatments similar to Retayne, so it will help your clothing stay bright (or dark) longer. Washing in hot water removes cationic dye fixatives like Retayne, and warm water will not enable it to last as long as cool water will.

What I always do with my own laundry is turn it inside out and launder in cool water. Cool water helps prevent clothing from bleeding. Most of my clothing does not bleed in the wash at all. Of course, it helps that I never use all-purpose dye, such as Rit, when I dye my own clothing. The fiber reactive dye I prefer to use does not bleed in the laundry. I turn my clothing inside out more to reduce wear on the surface than out of any care about color fading. Turning your clothing inside out for every single laundering is the best way to prevent the development of pilling on the surface of knit garments, such as t-shirts. It also helps prevent the surface wear that causes indigo denim to appear to fade (which is in large part caused by surface abrasion, not by the fading of the dye itself).

However, the chloramines now added in many water treatment facilities damage the dye in clothing much more than the older forms of chlorine that were used in previous decades. My home-dyed clothing, dyed the same way as that which used to stay bright for me for several hundred washes, are now noticeably faded after only one hundred washes. There is a good chemical way to prevent this fading, if you are willing to go to the trouble. What you need to do is obtain sodium bisulfite or sodium metabisulfite, also known as Anti-Chlor. The cheapest way to get it may be to mail-order it; a good source is PRO Chemical & Dye, in Massachusetts. You can also obtain it from a store that sells home winemaking supplies, either as a powder with the chemical name on it, or in the form of a product called Camden Tablets. I think that the more dilute solutions available from aquarium supply stores are likely to be more expensive per use. If you add three tablespoons (3/4 of a quarter of a cup) of sodium metabisulfite to every twenty-gallon washing machine load, it should significantly slow down fading that is caused by the disinfectants added to ensure the safety of the water supply. For more information on this and related (but more expensive) chemicals, see "How can I neutralize the damaging effects of chlorine bleach?".

Black pepper powder is rather amusing as a home remedy to prevent dyes from fading. I predict that reasonable quantities of it (less than a pound per load) will have absolutely no effect on whether dyes fade, but it may impart an interesting scent to your laundry. Using a significant quantity could be rather expensive, as well.

There is no need for baking soda or vinegar in the laundry to prevent the dye from bleeding. In the last year or so, I have started using vinegar in the final rinse in order to prevent the growth of odor-causing bacteria (important when laundering towels to be used in a humid climate), but this doesn't do anything noticeable in protecting the color of my clothing. In fact, odor prevention is the only real reason to use either vinegar or baking soda in the laundry. Never use both baking soda and vinegar at the same time, by the way, because they will neutralize each other.

Soda ash, which is another form of the same chemical found in washing soda, is a very good cleaner, so it's found in most laundry detergent powders. It will not serve to set the dye in fabric in the laundry, however. It must be used only when the dye is applied, not later on in the wash, and will work only on fiber reactive dyes, not the direct dye that is commonly used in commercial clothing due to its cheapness.

Retayne and other cationic dye fixatives work by sticking to dye molecules that are not well bound to the fibers in clothing. The larger aggregations of the positively-charged dye fixative and the negatively-charged dye molecules tend to stick much better in the negatively-charged textile fibers. Retayne is applied by soaking fabric in hot water with a small amount of the Retayne added; it will last through many launderings, if the treated garments are washed only in cool water. One can find advertisements for cationic dye fixatives that are claimed to be formaldehyde-free for use in the textile industry on clothing intended for sale in Europe, where formaldehyde regulations are stricter than those in the US, but none of the dye fixatives available for home use in the US are completely free of formaldehyde, although, after dilution for sale in the crafts industry, they may contain so little formaldehyde that it does not need to be listed on the MSDS safety pages for the products.

Is it the presence of these small amounts of formaldehyde in the Retayne that bothers you? I can understand your not wanting to use anything with formaldehyde, since it is poisonous and a known human carcinogen, one to which we are exposed at surprisingly large levels in the form of anything from salon hair-straightening treatments (often labeled "formaldehyde free" even when they contain dangerously high levels of formaldehyde!) to inexpensive furniture made of pressed wood. Undiluted Retayne contains approximately 0.15% formaldehyde, if my information is correct. We are supposed to use 5 milliliters of this product per yard of fabric; if added to a one-gallon bucket of water, this works out to be 2 parts per million of formaldehyde, some of which will be dumped out afterwards with the excess water. This is significantly less than the amount of formaldehyde exposure we might get from, say, being in the same room with a piece of new particleboard furniture, but it is still an exposure that we'd like to avoid.

Ironically, though, the clothing whose color you are trying to protect probably already contains formaldehyde. It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of clothing sold in the US is processed with formaldehyde, although the presence of formaldehyde in the clothing is never declared on the label. Formaldehyde is used to in some products that make cheap direct dyes wash-resistant, and it is commonly present in fabric finishes that provide wrinkle resistance and other popular properties to clothing, often at levels much higher than you will find as the result of treatment with Retayne. This is why it is important for everyone to always wash new clothing, before the first wearing, in order to reduce exposure to formaldehyde, although it is impossible to remove all of it. I am not sure that even clothing labeled "organic" is always free of these finishes, although it ought to be, because there is woefully little enforcement of any regulations concerning the use of these chemicals.

At any rate, using sodium metabisulfite as a color preservative in the wash does not involves any exposure to formaldehyde. It is not good to breathe the fumes from sulfites such as sodium metabisulfite, especially if you have asthma, since it can generate irritating sulfur dioxide, but this is not likely to be a problem with any reasonable amount of care, in the brief exposures involved in just adding a small cup of the powder to a washing machine.

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Monday, July 04, 2011

How much soda ash do you add to one gallon of the dye, if you are using that method?

Name: Sarah

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Country or region: USA

Message: How much soda ash do you add to one gallon of the dye, if you are using that method?

If you are tie-dyeing, and adding the soda ash powder directly to the Procion MX fiber reactive dye mixtures, instead of using a soda ash pre-soak for your fabric, then you can add one teaspoon (5 ml) of soda ash to each 8-ounce (250 ml) bottle of dye. That is the same amount as 16 teaspoons of soda ash per gallon of dye mixture, or one-third of a cup of soda ash. Shake or stir until the powder has dissolved, and apply it to your fabric right away.

You can see a recipe for activated Procion MX dye mixtures on my page, "Sodium alginate, Superclear, and other dye thickeners".

Don't mix in the soda ash until you are about to apply the dye! The Procion MX dye starts reacting right away, as soon as you have added the soda ash. It will become noticeably weaker in less than an hour. It can stay good for over a week without the soda ash.

(Also do not do this if you are not using a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX or Vinyl Sulfone dyes. Soda ash does not work with all-purpose dye, such as Rit dye.)

If you are not tie-dyeing, but instead immersion dyeing a small amount of fabric to a single solid color in a bucket of water, the recipe is quite different. For one gallon of water, to dye up to two-thirds of a pound of fabric, you would use one tablespoon of Procion MX dye, one cup of non-iodized salt, and eight teaspoons of soda ash.

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Saturday, July 02, 2011

I think it's probably safe to say we no longer need to mention RIT dye

Name: Garron

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Country or region: California

Message: With all due respect to newer dyes, I think it's probably safe to say we no longer need to mention RIT, it's positively the most pathetic excuse of powder in a box.....insult to call it dye, stain maybe more accurate. I've used hundreds of boxes until I found Procion.

I absolutely agree that all-purpose dye is a poor dye for most purposes, and yet you wouldn't believe how much mail I get from people who are having problems because they used it! People write because the color washes out, or because it runs in the laundry and ruins their other clothing, or because they didn't wash it after dyeing so it's rubbing off onto other things. Many people assume that Rit is the only brand of dye there is, since it has long been sold in grocery stores and pharmacies, so they don't even look for another dye that is more appropriate for their purposes.

People are often surprised to learn that all-purpose dyes are much more expensive to use than fiber reactive dyes. As shown in the comparison of dye costs chart in a post I made to the Dye Forum, it costs about $1.85 to dye one pound of cotton to a pale to medium shade with Rit All-Purpose dye, while it costs as little as 40¢ a pound to obtain a medium shade with Procion MX dyes—which last through at least twenty times as many launderings, likely many more, and without the need for the bother of hand-washing, and without the damage caused by dye bleeding onto other garments that are washed at the same time. Plus, there is no need to invest in a five-gallon cooking pot to use cool water fiber reactive dyes, which are used at room temperature, but all-purpose dye requires this considerable investment—and one should not plan to reuse a dyeing pot for cooking food.

I also get letters from people who use much worse dyes, such as beets, assuming that because something is a lovely red color it has to make a good dye, when in fact the best you are likely to get from beets is a dirty beige. (See, for example, my blog entry on problems in dyeing with beets.) Some of the "dyes" that people write to me about using make all-purpose dye look good by comparison.

In favor of all-purpose dye, it can be the best solution for dyeing garments that are made of both nylon and cotton, sewn together, when what's wanted is the same color on both parts. While it is possible to use Procion MX dye to color both nylon and cotton, doing so requires a two-step process, with soda ash or another base as the auxiliary chemical for the cotton in the first step, and acid as the auxiliary chemical for the nylon in the second step, with enough washing to neutralize the pH in between the two steps. Sometimes a single-step process is preferable, and for pre-mixed colors the all-purpose dye may even make it easier to get the two fibers to match in color after dyeing.

All-purpose dye is a bad choice for multi-color tie-dyeing, or any sort of dyeing in which more than one color of dye is applied to a single piece, because of the way the dye runs and bleeds in the first wash, spoiling the brightness of the colors in the design.

However, for a single-color piece, the washfastness problem can be solved by using Retayne or another commercial cationic dye fixative. Of course, that can be harder to locate than a decent fiber reactive dye. Many crafts stores carry one brand of fiber reactive dye, either Dylon or Tulip, in addition to the excellent Jacquard Products brand of tie-dye kit, but few carry Retayne.

A serious dyer will rarely find a situation in which all-purpose dye is the right choice, but sometimes it does happen.

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Friday, July 01, 2011

Is it possible to lighten the color of black silk lace enough to accept purple dye?

Name: Danielle

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Country or region: United States

Message: Hi. Thank you so much for your fabulous website!

I need purple lace for a dress I will be sewing. I have found some antique black silk lace that I really like. Is it possible to lighten the lace enough to accept purple dye since I know I can't use bleach? Or do I have to keep searching and find white lace instead?

Thanks!

Please do keep searching and use white lace instead. While it is often possible to safely lighten the color of dyed silk using a sulfur-based dye remover, such as Rit Color Remover, or Jacquard Color Remover, it doesn't always work. The sulfur-based dye removers are much kinder to the fiber than the damaging hypochlorite in chlorine bleach, but the results of using any color remover, including bleach, will not necessarily be light enough in color. Some dyes simply cannot be removed at all, and there's no way to predict what will happen with any commercially-produced lace, since you have no way of knowing what kind of dye was used in its manufacture. There is a significant chance that enough color will remain, no matter what you do, that you won't be able to dye it to a pure clear purple. You can try removing the black dye in this lace, and it might work well, but you shouldn't expect that the results will necessarily be good.

I am sure that some fans of antique lace would like me to point out here that a true antique should not be subjected to either color remover or dye, but that really does depend on the value of the lace.

If you find some lighter-colored lace to dye, be sure to find out for certain, before you buy it, what its fiber content is. The fiber content makes a huge difference in what kind of dye you can use. Rayon (of the viscose type we call rayon in the US, not rayon acetate) is easy to dye with the same dyes that work on cotton, such as Procion MX dyes. Nylon can usually be dyed with another kind of dye, called acid dye (it's named after the mild acid, such as vinegar, which is used with it); it does require heating in a non-aluminum cooking pot. Polyester is more difficult to dye, since it has to be boiled for an hour with a special type of dye called disperse dye; ordinary dyes that work on cotton or silk will not work at all on polyester.

Dharma Trading Company sells some easy-to-dye cotton lace trim. Since at least some of it is on clearance sale now, I'm not sure whether they will be continuing to carry it, but they still have a good selection at the time of this writing. Look at their page at the following link: Dyeable Cotton Lace Trim. Since this lace is made of cotton, it will be extremely easy to dye with fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX dyes, which are extremely wash-resistant (unlike all-purpose dyes such as Rit), and are easily set with soda ash instead of heat. You can use the tie-dyeing recipe with any color (or colors) that you like.

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