Name: Anthony

Country: United States

Message: Hi, I have a men's suit (jacket and pants), off white in color. It is 50% cotton and 50% nylon. It's a pretty heavy fabric. After being stored for awhile, it has yellow spots on it. Dry cleaning did not get them out. I want to dye it a dark color, maybe dark navy. Can you tell me what my options are on what to use and or how to go about doing this?

Have you tried washing it with water and a mild detergent? Two reasons: 1, sometimes water will remove stains that dry-cleaning fails to remove; and 2, you must wash it before you can dye it.  You cannot dye anything that is not washable. It is extremely important to thoroughly wash any garment before dyeing it, and dyeiung itself is at least as hard on clothing as washing is, since it requires immersion in water.

After you have washed your suit with water, you will have to assess how well it has survived. If the lining has shrunk more or less than the outer layer of the fabric, then the fit and shape of the suit will be ruined. At that point, the only thing you can do is discard the suit, or cut it up to use the fabric in another project.

If your suit survives washing, then you can consider the correct method for dyeing it. Dyeing a cotton/nylon blend is the perfect job for an all-purpose dye, since the direct dye in the blend will work on cotton, while the acid dye in the blend will work on nylon. See "About All Purpose Dyes". There are two drawbacks of all-purpose dyes. One is that they require hot water in order to work, ideally water brought to a simmer in a huge cooking pot, at 187°F or above. The other is that all-purpose dyes are not very washfast. You can compromise on the water temperature by using the hottest water available in your washing machine, to dye the suit (although this is even more likely to shrink and ruin the suit than simply washing it did), and you can solve the washfastness by using a cationic dye fixative afterwards, such as Retayne. See "Commercial Dye Fixatives". You will not be able to find the cationic dye fixative in most local stores; if you can't find it locally, you can mail-order it from Joann.com. Note that there is no home remedy that will work nearly as well as Retayne; neither salt nor vinegar will work in this way.

I must point out that I do not recommend the use of all-purpose dyes, except for special circumstances like this one in which the blend requires it. Cool-water fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dye, can be used with much less damage to clothing, because it can be applied in room-temperature water, and it lasts many times longer; however, it will work only on the cotton fibers in your suit's blend, and not on the nylon. All-purpose dyes are ideal for a cotton/nylon blend, in spite of their drawbacks.

Nylon will take the acid dye in the all-purpose blend best if you add a mild acid to the dyeing water. Vinegar is a good choice. In spite of what people who don't know about dye often say, vinegar is no use at all in fixing dye on cotton, but it is often necessary for best results on nylon. The manufacturers of Tintex® High Temp all-purpose dye, in Australia, recommend the use of 100 ml (2/5 cup) of white vinegar per 4 liters of water when dyeing wool, silk, or nylon. For a standard twenty-gallon top-loader washing machine load, this works out to two quarts of ordinary distilled white vinegar, 5% acidity, from the grocery store.

For dark colors, it is important to use enough dye. You must use one or two boxes of Rit brand all-purpose dye for every pound of fabric. While the packet indicates that one box will dye two pounds of fiber, this is true only if you are trying to obtain a pale color, such as light gray. Darker colors require more dye. Weigh your suit before you get started, while it is still dry. If your suit weighs five pounds, you will want to use ten boxes of black or navy all-purpose dye.  After applying the dye in the washing machine, you will need to wash out the unattached excess dye. Use only cool water to wash anything that has been dyed with all-purpose dye, and wash it separately from other garments, because all-purpose dye tends to bleed badly in the laundry until after a cationic dye fixative such as Retayne has been applied.

If your suit cannot be washed at all, as is true for many lined garments, then you should ignore all of this information. Washing is in essential part of the dyeing process.

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