In the “lab” this week, I’m dying. In the sense of permanently changing the color of my clothes.
Update 7/2011: Although the color looked fine that day, it really didn’t last. I still have the jeans, they are light as ever, and I am just wearing them in the summer.
I love the fit of these Levis, but I just don’t wear a medium tone except in the summer. They needed to be dark.
Using one bottle of “denim blue”, I simply followed the directions on the box for dying in the washing machine. The color is a bit bright; if there is a “next time”, I will try a different shade.
Now the creative juices are flowing in all sorts of colors! I think I’ll tea-stain some of my white shirts, try kool-aid on a boring blue cashmere sweater …
Have you ever dyed anything?
KOOL!! Can’t wait to hear/see how each turns out.
So far as I can tell, getting anything darker than ivory from tea requires a fixing agent. Simmering with vinegar and salt is entirely insufficient. I was dying a T-shirt I’d had for a while, and there were trace amounts of antiperspirant on it. That was the only place the dye was retained. I ended up applying an old stick of antiperspirant to the entire thing, and that worked. So yeah, fixing agents. But I imagine you know what you’re doing. XD
I assume you’re joking about the Kool-Aid, since you’d be left with a sticky sweater even after rinsing. (This is a tested fact from people who use it as temporary hair dye.)
I haven’t tried tea-staining, but I’ve tried coffee-staining, and it took an entire good-sized can of instant coffee to get a dingy beige. This is not an ideal technology for getting uniform color, which is why RIT is such great stuff.
Very cool. I have often thought about doing this with jeans that had faded, but never could muster the guts.
Have dyed, not a fan. Dyes can change the texture, and the colour ofen fades quickly. Out of 6-8 projects, maybe one success, and a lot of mess to get it.
Chrs – imagine I know what I’m doing? Yikes! Not on this, I’m totally a beginner.
About tea staining: I’ve done a white linen shirt belonging to my hero and it came out great. Now I’m wondering whether I used tea or coffee. But I know I didn’t use anything with it, salt or vinegar or heat, I just left it sit in a tub for a long time. It was a while ago, though, so the details are sketchy. I don’t even remember for sure why I needed to do it (whether there was some sort of a stain involved or?)
Wende – actually, I wasn’t joking about the kool aid – I got the idea from looking at the knitting web-sites when I was searching for info on dying cashmere. Why would it be sticky if you didn’t use the sugar kind? Anyway, today I talked to a friend who makes her own yarn and she said the exact same thing the knitting sites said: kool aid works on animal fibers (as opposed to vegetable like cotton), vinegar or citric acid is needed, and you just don’t agitate it if you don’t want it to “felt”.
I may end up using RIT anyway, since I’m not sure I can find a kool aid color that will go over the blue and produce a color I like better. But if the whole experiment fails, I haven’t lost much.
Emily – if I try it again with jeans and find a color I like better, I’ll be sure and post it.
Duchesse – that’s what I was expecting, which made this success such a surprise. Since I was able to use the washer, and thus contain the mess, I think probably restoring faded jeans or blacks might be the applications for which I would recommend dying. It still remains to be seen, though, how long the dark blue holds up. The good thing about jeans is I can wear them more times in between washings than some other garments.
Dyeing usually takes the shine away from clothes, (at least for a while). They get more mate. My bests results were with wool ( but be carefull with shrinking in hot water) and naturally with cotton. Also I have done bras made of different fabrics., lace and silk will come out a diferent colour. Very funny in warm colours like cooper, yellow, pink…
BUT: Certain colours have less stability: (blues!!!).
Warm colours are better. Yellows are stable and look fresh. Some greens. Never got a stong red.
Bad surprise: IIn cotton clothes, the sewings are often made of polyester., so wont take the colour as well as the fabric. I prefer choosing a colour that is close from the original: Ex: Turn white to yellow, grey to blue. Black to black. Blue to green. Blue jeans to indigo or purple.
I wonder if a combination of denim blue and black would produce better results? In high school a friend of mine dyed a pair of cornflower blue cords with pink rit and ended up with a fabulous purple. (We then turned them into a skirt. It was awesome.)
Pacha – thanks so much! Those are helpful observations. My daughter had been surprised to see that the gold stitching on my levis had not changed color in the dying process.
Your experiences remind me of a dying experience we had a couple of years ago when costuming Little Women: I had picked up a cheap “prom” dress or costume wedding dress, anyway it was white, for $1 at Value Village, which fit the tiny girl playing Meg. But they didn’t want Meg’s ballgown white. Another lady, who had more costuming experience, took it home and worked for days trying to dye it dark green, but it turned out to be more of a pale grey. Except the rick-rack trim. That came out a deep hunter green. At any rate, it was a cheap costume and worked fine for the show (but it would have been a real disappointment in anyone’s actual wardrobe).
Emily – that’s exactly what I was thinking. Or maybe indigo and black.
And that’s helpful about your high school friend’s project. My sweater I am considering dying is close to a cornflower blue; if I decide to use kool aid, I can certainly turn it purple. But I’m still leaning toward going for a teal. We’ll see. So far I haven’t made it to the store to look. 🙂
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