Name: linda
Message: I am attempting to dye some velvet fabric that was gifted to me...the fabric content is unknown, but I suspect it's completely man-made.  I tried using the same Procion MX recipe and technique that I use on silk gauze.  The color result was beautiful - until I rinsed it.  Every shred of color rinsed out.  I tried the "burn" test on some of it, and it melted & balled up, which tells me it's synthetic.  HELP!  What type of dye will work?  Or is it the recipe/technique?  I dye pretty much the same way you have in your tutorial.  Thank you for any help/advice! 

You probably have either nylon or polyester. Can you tell which, from the burn test? You may be able to tell from the color of the bead, the color of the smoke, and the smell it produced while burning. Here are links to two sets of descriptions to try to distinguish between polyester and nylon:
http://www.lindrix.com/fabcontent.html
http://www.fabrics.net/fabricsr.asp
Or, you can just try a dye test using dye that will work on nylon, and see whether it works or not.

If your velvet is made of nylon, it will be reasonably easy to dye with acid dyes. You can use Procion MX dyes as acid dyes, if you use white vinegar instead of soda ash, and heat your nylon velvet in the dyebath. (This works for silk, too.) You could try a test swatch in a glass mason jar, which you can heat in a pot of boiling water without contaminating a good pot; mix a little MX dye with 1 tablespoon of vinegar and 1.5 cups of water, add your nylon, and heat it at 185 degrees F or so (85 degrees C) for twenty minutes, then rinse out your small swatch of fabric and see whether you have any greater success than you had the first time, using soda ash.

If your velvet is made of polyester, it cannot be dyed with any ordinary type of dye. The only dye that will work on polyester is disperse dye, either in a boiling dyebath or in the form of fabric crayon iron-ons. If what you have is stretch velvet, it probably contains spandex in addition to the other fiber; spandex cannot survive extended periods of high heat, so polyester/spandex is impossible to dye. It must be dyed before the fibers are combined. See "Dyeing Polyester with Disperse Dyes".

Synthetic fibers can be "pigment dyed", that is, colored with thin high-quality fabric paints, but the binder in the paint might glue together the hairs in the nap of the velvet. Try a test swatch before committing to the fabric paint approach to this project. See "Fabric Paints: a different way to color fibers", and "Pigment 'dyeing' is not even dyeing!" in the Dye Forum.

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