Fabric dyeing at home





Favorite thing has lost its appeal and faded, or just want to experiment with old t-shirts and jeans? There is a wonderful solution - dyeing the fabric at home. Many are interested in the question of how to do this correctly. In hardware stores you can buy special dyes for all types of fabrics. In addition, you can use products that cost a penny and are always at hand - spices, berries, fresh vegetables, tea, blue tea and more. Read more about different dyes and the procedure for proper staining in our article.

to contents ↑

A number of rules for dyeing fabric using natural products

To begin with, I would like to understand the nuances that must be considered before dyeing the fabric blue at home. Namely:

• Cloth, threads or clothing should be perfectly clean.
• Before painting, the thing should be boiled in clean water with the addition of soda ash. For silk in the penultimate rinse apply ammonia 0.5 g per 1 liter of water.
• Use glassware (refractory) or enameled (without chips). Take a stick for stirring, either wooden or plastic.
• To better fix the paint on the fabric, sometimes the fabric should be held in an alum solution. This process is called mistress. The fabric is boiled in this solution for up to 30 minutes, after which it is removed and put into the dye without pressing. Boiling is not necessary - you can just soak the cloth in the mordant.

Important! In addition to various alum, zinc or copper sulfate is used for mordants, and natural home remedies are vinegar, sauerkraut juice. Formic acid and ash from birch firewood can also be used. Prepare mordant with a calculation of 1-10 g per liter of water. For every 100 g of yarn or fabric you will need at least 3 liters of mordant solution.

• The speed of dyeing the fabric will depend on the temperature of the water, the fabric itself and on various additives to the dyeing solution.
• Silk fabric or threads are also boiled in a dyeing solution for up to one hour, like wool.
• Coloring linen at home, as well as viscose and cotton in hot water - on the contrary, slows down. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the water temperature is not higher than 85 degrees. At the end of painting such things should add table salt (2 tablespoons).
• The coloring solution in relation to the weight of the yarn (fabric) should be 20 times more, because for a good dyeing things should be in free “swimming”.
• Salt and vinegar fix the paint, so the fabric will shed less. During the last rinse of things from any material, you always need to add a small amount of vinegar.
• Immediately after the staining procedure, things must be properly hung or laid out to dry. If this is not done correctly, smudges and stains may form on the fabric.
• Before you dye a white shirt at home entirely, you need to conduct a test on a small piece, having gone through all the technological processes.
• The room in which you intend to carry out the painting procedure must be well ventilated.

Important! You should consider allergies to plants that you will use as a dye.Some plants are poisonous, so in order not to get a burn or bright spots of paint, use gloves.

to contents ↑

Types of fabrics that can be dyed:

• The most malleable in this matter fabrics of natural origin: silk, wool, linen, cotton.
• Mixed textile materials — half-woolen products, half-silk — are well painted.
• Polyester it is time-consuming to paint, and the result may not be so impressive. The fibers of this fabric absorb paint worse, due to which the color of the product will be dull, and, most likely, it will fade during the first wash after painting.

Important! If the jacket made of synthetic material has lost its color, then it is better to entrust its painting to dry cleaning. There, they will choose the right professional paint products that require strict temperature and other conditions. At home, it is easy to dye cotton t-shirts, towels, dresses and skirts.

to contents ↑

What is better to dye the fabric?

For dyeing fabrics at home in any hardware store, you can purchase special paints for different types of fabrics. They are pasty, in the form of powders and crystals. However, many are afraid to use “chemistry”, because the product may be damaged, and instead of the original thing, you just get a rag for mopping the floor.

At home, many natural dyes can be used very successfully - they are safe for both humans and materials, although they are not as intense as chemical ones.

Natural dyes for fabrics:

• Oak bark, onion peel, coffee, tea, henna, cinnamon and basma give brown shades.
• To dye the fabric green at home will help poplar bark, spinach, bird cherry, sorrel, juniper berries, elderberry leaves, as well as greenback.
• With the help of natural coffee you can get a black color.
• In order to color a thing red, use blueberry elderberry, beetroot, wolfberry leaves.
• Blue and blue will give sage, ivan da Maria flowers, quinoa seeds, red cabbage, blackberries.
• Turmeric, wild apple bark, celandine - for orange tones.
• Yellow paint - orange peel, bark and birch leaves, poplar buds, nettle roots, turmeric, zira, carrots, wormwood.

to contents ↑

How to choose a dye?

The correct choice of dye is determined by the material of the product and its color. How to determine the type of textile? - Pull one small thread across and along the fabric and set fire to:

• Flax, cotton and rayon burn well. You will immediately smell the burnt paper.
• Wool and natural silk burn worse. When burning a woolen thread, you will smell a burnt horn, and a sintered ball will form on its tip.

The color of the matter matters when choosing paint and its quantity. When dyeing the fabric at home in white, subject to the conditions, the color of the product should be the same as indicated on the package. But with colored clothes it is more difficult - an ugly and dirty shade can turn out.

The purpose of painting also affects the choice of dye. In order to get light shades, you can resort to natural dyes - chemical dyes are also suitable, but then they should be taken in small proportions.

Important! If a thing got stuck and lost its former brightness, then to restore color it needs less dye than to paint white things.

to contents ↑

Preparatory stage

In order to dye the fabric brown at home, you will need:

• Textile product.
• Deep capacity.
• Wooden spatulas or sticks.
• Dye.
• Water.
• Protective gloves.

We prepare textiles

Before painting, the product must be prepared:

• All clothing should be well washed and stained.
• Old pollution should also be eliminated, because they can stand out against the general background, as a result of spoiling the whole view. For these purposes, you can apply stain remover, good washing and ironing.Otherwise, if this is not done, the product may be unevenly painted.

Important! If stains cannot be eliminated in any way, then select exclusively dark shades for painting. Light colors will not be able to paint over such spots.

• Also, all buttons and jewelry should be removed from the clothes that you intend to dye. They may rust and be damaged.
• Starch should be removed from new linen and cotton products. For these purposes, they should be boiled for 20 minutes in a soda-soap solution, and after the procedure, thoroughly rinse the thing, since the remnants of soda and soap can interfere with staining.
• Rinse the wool in the following solution - 2 tablespoons of ammonia in 12 liters of water.

Important! In the process of dyeing yarn, it is very important to ensure that it does not get tangled. To do this, it should be painted with individual skeins, which must first be bandaged in several places. For convenience, skeins can be strung on a piece of thin rope, so they can be easily turned over during painting.

Water and tank preparation

In the process of dyeing fabric at home, preparatory work should be carried out not only with textile products, but also with a capacity for work:

• There is a rule for aluminum and galvanized utensils - all traces of scale must be removed before the procedure.
• The capacity you need to choose the right size. During painting, the product must not wrinkle. It will absorb paint well only if it is completely immersed in the dye solution. If the dishes are too small, then there is a risk that the item will be colored unevenly.
• To turn the fabric over during painting, prepare two wooden sticks in advance. They must be strong, long and smooth, without any knots. An uneven wooden surface can catch the product and tear it.
• Soft water is taken for the procedure. Ideally, it is rain or melt water. However, if such water is not at your disposal, and you have only hard water, then you can soften it like this - add 12 tablespoon of water to 1 tablespoon of soda.

Stages of painting

When all of the above is done, you can proceed to the direct painting of the product:

1. The very first thing you need to do is read the manufacturer's recommendations, which are indicated on the package with the dye.
2. Further - following the instructions, pour the paint into a small bowl, gradually adding water, mix it thoroughly so that it dissolves.
3. Strain the coloring solution, pour it into the container with which you are going to paint the product.
4. Dilute the dye with water so that it can completely cover your item.
5. Place a container on the gas.
6. Immerse the product in dye.
7. In order to dye the fabric blue evenly at home, rotate the fabric in a circle with sticks or a spatula.
8. Pull out the product when it becomes a darker shade than you would like (after drying, the fabric will become slightly lighter).
9. If you want to get stains on the fabric, the product should be twisted, as in the spin cycle, and secured with rubber rings.
10. Rinse the painted thing thoroughly in water so that after the last rinse the water remains clean.

to contents ↑

We color things with natural dyes

When dyeing fabric with natural dyes, it is advisable to adhere to the following rules:

• Before you start dyeing, you should test a natural remedy on a small tissue leaking.
• Pour selected raw materials with cold water in a ratio of 1: 2. Put on gas and bring to a boil, then immediately remove. Now you need to let the future dye infuse.

Important! The more time the raw material is infused, the brighter and more saturated the color will turn out.

• The fabric should be prepared by immersing it in a fixing solution:
  1. for berries - half a glass of salt in 2 liters of water;
  2. for vegetables - water + vinegar in a ratio of 4: 1.
• Now the item can be immersed in dye. Keep it there until you find the desired shade. Do not forget that after drying the color will become a little lighter.
• To avoid stains and stains, dry things on hangers.

to contents ↑

Useful tricks:

• Before staining, weigh the product - this will make it possible to accurately determine the required amount of dye.
• After staining with chemicals, the dishes in which the procedure took place cannot be used for cooking.
• For silk, when rinsing, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to the water.
• For wool, dissolve the dye in hot water.
• For flax and jeans, add a little soda ash to the paint and only then dissolve it in water.
• If the cellulose cloth is not colored evenly, then dip it in hot water with the addition of washing powder. This will help align the color slightly.
• If you are going to alter a thing, then it should be spread at the seams before painting.
• At the bottom of the container you can put a plank of wood, so that the clothes do not burn.
• Woolen products on the shoulders should not be dried. Because of this, they can stretch out - just lay them out on a flat surface.

to contents ↑

Stock footage

Do not be afraid to experiment with old, lost-looking clothes, because dyeing fabric at home can give a second life to many of your things!