Name: deb

Country: canada

Message: I am trying to hand dye three 100% wool felt carpets, 48"diameter/1/4" thick. Due to their size, I cannot do immersion dyeing or steam setting. I am wanting to shift from an oatmeal colour to a smoky black blue. I was given some incorrect directions by a local supplier who recommended a soda ash soak (!) followed by MX reactive direct dye application and bagging it in plastic. The carpets turned an iron red shade. I was on the ProChem website and read their direct dye application instructions for wool calling for a vinegar soak.  Has the original soda ash soak affected the wool fibres?  Do I need to neutralize or just wash the carpets before I try the ProChem method? Do you have any suggestions?

I have a large studio space and have made a temporary structure in which I can rinse the carpets well.  Heat is another problem in that I can't get the heat up much higher than 70 degrees due to the size of my space and it is winter and I'm in Canada.

I can't tell you whether or not the high pH of the soda ash has ruined the texture of your wool rugs. All you can do is wash them out and see. It helps a lot that they are felted. The damage you'd see on unfelted wool would look a lot like felting. 

I recommend that you rinse the soda ash and any remaining dye out of your rugs thoroughly with water, avoiding sudden temperature changes. Gradually increase the temperature of the water, since warmer water works better for removing excess dye than cold water does. After rinsing, neutralize the pH of the wool by rinsing with a mixture of 1/4 cup of white distilled vinegar for each gallon of water. If you are going to try the ProChem recipe that calls for vinegar, you want to be sure to have removed all of the soda ash first, as otherwise the remaining soda ash and vinegar will neutralize each other, resulting in the effect of there being less vinegar than you use in the recipe.

It seems very unlikely to me that you can successfully dye wool rugs at only 70°F, with no steaming and no soda ash. Dyeing wool with acid requires some heat. I've been told that the "cold batch" method of dyeing wool with fiber reactive dyes and vinegar produces rather pale colors, due to inadequate heat, in spite of the fact that the method as described actually requires some heat, as provided by sunlight on black plastic bags. (See "Fiber reactive dyes on protein fibers".) This would make it impossible to achieve a dark color, let alone black. Is there any other way to help heat the dye in the carpets? There are steam cleaners on the market that seem inadequate for steam-fixing dye, but surely must be better than room temperature. I wonder if you could rent one.

It will be hard to cover up an iron red shade. Your choice of a nearly black final color is a fortunate one, as far as covering up the iron red color is concerned. I wonder if you would do better to use a fabric paint, instead of a dye, so that you don't have to worry about heating the dye or using wool-damaging soda ash. Fabric paint does wear off more quickly than dye, but it might still be your best bet. In the US, I would recommend trying Dharma Pigment Dyes or Dye-Na-Flow, which are both fabric paints that are thin, like dye. Since you're in Canada, I'd suggest you contact G&S Dye, in Toronto, to ask whether any of their fabric paints are suitable for this purpose. 

On the other hand, whatever damage you've done to the texture of the wool is done, and since the rugs were already felted, they might be fine and not show any significant damage at all. If so, perhaps the best bet would in fact be to repeat the soda ash method you used already. Unfortunately, as you observed, a premixed Procion MX color produces a drastically different color on wool than on cotton. The single-dye unmixed dye colors come out very nearly the same on wool as on cotton. All of the black Procion MX dyes are mixtures of three or more different dye colors. You need to correct the iron red by overdyeing it with a dark navy, and possibly some yellow, as well. You can see which of the Procion MX dyes sold by G&S dyes, or any of several other major dye retailers, are single-hue unmixed dyes on my page, "Which Procion MX dyes are pure, and which are mixtures?". I think, among the G&S dyes, you'd do best to use their 502 slate blue (which is Procion blue MX-2G, a navy blue), and, if that results in too purplish a color, another round of dyeing with some 208 bright yellow (which is Procion yellow MX-8G, ad pure clear lemon yellow). Since these are unmixed single dyes, their results are far more predictable on wool than are any of the premixed colors that were standardized for use on cotton.

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