Can I dye red and white striped socks to red and yellow, for a costume?

Name: Kelly

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Country or region: USA

Message: For a costume, I need red and yellow striped socks. I can only find red/white striped ones that will work, and was wondering if you think I'd be able to dye the white stripes yellow without affecting the red colour at all? The fibre content is 65% recycled cotton, 15% acrylic, 20% spandex. Thanks so much for any advice/recommendations!!

Since your socks are 60% cotton, they should be easy to dye, assuming that the different-colored stripes don't have different fiber contents. (We don't want to find out that all of the cotton is in the red stripes, so that the white stripes are all hard-to-dye acrylic!) The best choice would be a cool water fiber reactive dye for cotton, such as Procion MX dye, because the 20% spandex content should, ideally, be kept at or below a temperature of 104°F. It's usually best to not even bother to try to color the spandex in a bland; see How to Dye Spandex. If the red stripes are bright red, then overdyeing them with yellow will leave them red, or turn them to a somewhat orangish red. Will that work for your costume? If not, you can use a tie-dye squirt bottle to apply yellow dye only to the white stripes, after first soaking in soda ash as always for tie-dyeing.

Buy some yellow Procion MX dye, or yellow Dylon Permanent dye, or yellow Tulip One Step Fashion dye, if you can. The best local art supply stores might carry Procion MX dye, and even the worst local crafts store ought to carry a Jacquard brand tie-dyeing kit, or a Tulip tie-dyeing kit, either of which contains yellow dye that will perfectly meet your needs. The Jacquard Procion MX dye and the Jacquard tie-dyeing kits are the best choice; avoid Jacquard's iDye dye, which is a hot water dye and therefore not suitable for spandex blends. If you can't buy the right dye locally, you can order online for overnight delivery of a yellow Procion MX dye from Dharma Trading Company.

Since only 60% of the fiber blend in your socks is dyeable cotton, use a very strong amount of dye to dye it yellow. The acrylic fibers will stay white, as will the spandex fibers if you use a cool-water dye, but the overall effect will be yellow enough for your costume. If the yellow comes out too pale, you can always repeat the dyeing with twice as much dye powder. For dyeing with Procion MX dye, you will also need soda ash, but that is included in the tie-dye kits and the One Step dye kits.

If you can't find any brand of fiber reactive dye, the fall-back is all-purpose dye, such as Rit, which is easy to find although it is almost always an inferior choice for dyeing. All-purpose dye would be a poor choice for you because it bleeds in the wash, every time, and, as a result, does not stay bright very long. It also works best in hot water that is well above the maximum that spandex can tolerate. However, for a one-time-only costume, Rit dye will work well enough. Compromise on the water temperature, keeping the water below 140°F so as to not totally ruin the spandex. Spandex is much happier in much cooler water, but all-purpose dye works best at or above 185°F.

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Posted: Friday - October 21, 2011 at 08:48 AM

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Can I dye red and white striped socks to red and yellow, for a costume?

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