Test Dying the Slip

After looking around on the knot DIY board and viewing other knottie profiles I came across a knottie that decided to dye her slip (or crinoline). I loved the idea of having a little bit of color under the dress so I did some investigating on line and decided to try out some dyes on test fabric before perminatly altering the color of a $50 slip. I wanted to make sure that I got the same type of fabric as my slip so I toted the sucker into JoAnne Fabrics to find a fabric that was 100% nylon and had the same weave, texture and whatever as the slip. Luckily, I was able to find just that and for $3.49/yard for the crinoline fabric and $1.49/yard for the netting and bought two yards of each for testing.










Through investigating I found two products that were offered at my local stores: Rit Dye and Dylon.

Rit Dye was one that I had heard of but the stores here only offered it in Royal Blue. Through their website, www.ritdye.com, I fould that this acid based dye reacts well to 100% nylon products so I felt confident that it would work with my slip but at the same time I still wanted to do a test run. For this product it called for HOT water and a whole cup of salt.














I had never heard of Dylon before but I decided to give this one a go because it was in a lighter color that I liked. Their website www.dylon.co.uk under the help section says that "Polyester, Nylon and other synthetics cannot be dyed" but as I found out Dylon works just fine with nylon. I think they intended to say acrylic fabrics won't work. For this product it only called for warm water, which I thought was pecular, and 4T of salt.

So with that, I test dyed my fabric in the sink with an already blue bucket because I was worried about staining my sink.
Rit Dye.......................................Dylon










Result:










After doing this I found that not only did the Dylon work but I liked the color better than the Rit Dye. My only problem with the Dylon was that it appeared a little light and somewhat green to me even though the picture doesn't do it justice. I did show my fiancee the dyed fabrics and he agreed and suggested adding a little bit of the Rit Dye color to the Dylon to darken it up but I'm not sure if the two will play nice chemically. Maybe if I use HOT water and more salt it will absorb more of the dye.

Unfortunately for me I started the Dylon first but the rubber gloves that I was wearing sprung a leak while I was mixing with my hands. After that I switched to metal bbq tongs and used the gloves only to rinse and squeeze the fabric. Even though I caught the leak early my hand was still slightly dyed blue after much scrubbing but it did fade out eventually after a few days.