Name: Larissa

Message: I have a golf head cover that I would like to dye all in black. It's from Daphne and I have no clue of the material. How should I go about that? Your help will be greatly appreciated.

I would not want to bother trying to dye something whose fiber content is unknown, because the dyes that work on one fiber will completely fail on another. You could waste a lot of money on dyes and a dyepot, and a lot of time and effort, and still not have success in dyeing!

However, if you can snip a bit of excess fabric from a hidden seam, you can test your material to see what fiber it is made of. If it dissolves in nail polish remover, then you know that it is acetate - not likely, for a golf club cover. If you burn a snippet, then the odor as it burns, the color of the smoke, and the ash it leaves behind are all informative. Cotton will smell like burning paper and leave a crumbly ash. Silk and wool smell like burning hair. Nylon melts as it burns and smells like burning plastic or celery, leaving a hard gray bead instead of ash, while polyester smells sweet as it burns and leaves a hard black bead. See the Ditzy Prints Fiber Burn Chart and the Fabrics.net fabric identification page.

Once you know what sort of fiber you have, you can use that to decide what kind of dye best suits your fiber. Cotton and rayon are best dyed with fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dyes. Nylon is best dyed with acid dyes, such as PRO Chemical & Dye's Washfast Acid Dyes. Polyester can be dyed only by boiling it with disperse dyes. Olefin cannot be dyed at all. Please examine the following pages....

• Choosing the right dye for your fiber

• How to dye cotton

• How to dye nylon

• How to dye rayon

• How to dye polyester

• How to dye acrylic fiber

All dyes other than cool water fiber reactive dyes will require that you use a large non-aluminum cooking pot to boil the item to be dyed, with the dye. This pot must never again be used for cooking food, because fabric dyes will contaminate food.

Alternatively, you can use fabric paint to recolor most natural fibers and some synthetic fibers. Paint that is labeled as fabric paint is much more suitable than any other paint; it will feel less stiff and scratchy, and will cling to the fabric better. See "Fabric Paints: a different way to color fibers". Not all fabric paints will work on every kind of fabric. Jacquard Products says that their fabric paints, including Jacquard Textile Colors and Dye-na-Flow fabric paint, will work on polyester. Dharma Trading Company says the same thing about their Dharma Pigment Dyes fabric paint system. Note that no fabric paint will produce a perfectly smooth solid color as a dye will, but, for polyester, fabric paint is easier to use than polyester dye, and less expensive, too, since it doesn't require that you invest in a dyeing pot.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)