Name: Elizabeth

Message: Forgive me if this is a duplicate and I never found it (I searched at length). I just dyed our white canvas couch yesterday DARK BLUE with RIT, then early this am when we went to move it inside both of our sets of hands were blue. HELP! Will the fixative Retayne work, and can I paint it on??? Will it smell badly and will people be able to sit on the couch  without turning blue? I am desperate for your response! Thank you! Elizabeth


Oh, dear. Tell me that you didn't just paint some cold dye onto the couch, and hope it would stick! How did you apply it?

It is absolutely essential, when applying ANY kind of dye to ANYTHING that you plan for people to touch, that all of the excess unattached dye be rinsed out afterwards. You must move this couch back outside and hose it off very thoroughly, again and again, until the rinse water no longer contains any color. There is no other hope for it. You cannot dye without rinsing.

Another problem is that canvas can be woven from all sorts of different fibers. Cotton canvas or hemp canvas is easy to dye, if you remove it from the furniture first; however, polyester canvas and acrylic canvas are highly impractical to do (essentially impossible for a novice), and polypropylene is impossible to dye after it is made into fabric. Is your canvas couch made out of cotton, or some less dyeable material?

In addition, Rit all-purpose dye is a hot water dye. Although it is not the most wash-resistant of dyes even when applied properly in a 190°F boiling water dye bath (simmering the fabric in the dye for half an hour to an hour), it will hardly stick at all when applied at room temperature. Perhaps using a hot steam-cleaner would provide an adequate amount of heat to set this hot-water dye, although afterwards the excess dye must still be rinsed repeatedly, as described above. A cleaner that applies hot steam and also removes water would be ideal for your purposes; does such a thing exist?

Once you've hosed off the upholstery, it's going to be soaking wet, of course. This can be a real problem. If it stays wet for too long, it's likely to support the growth of fungus, such as mold or mildew. This can produce ugly dark stains, or provoke allergies in susceptible people. Of course you'll want to squeeze out as much water as possible. Take off any removable parts, such as cushions; if they have zippered covers, unzip and remove them so they can dry without their filling. Drying with hair dryers might help, and the heat from the hair dryers would help to set any dye they got hot enough, but it sounds very tedious, a process that could take days. Renting a huge fan, like people whose houses have been flooded, might help.

Retayne is normally applied in a washing machine, in hot water. It's great for improving the washfastness (wash resistance) of all-purpose dye on removable slipcovers, though it may increase fading caused by sunlight. I don't see any good way to apply Retayne to fabric that is still attached to a couch. If you were to somehow spray it on, you would still need to apply heat to encourage it to stick.

Good luck with your couch. It looks like a project where a lot of trouble could have been avoided by getting instructions first. Before you try this again, please read this page from the FAQ on my site: "Can furniture be dyed successfully?", and also the accompanying page, "Scarlet Zebra's Instructions for Painting Upholstered Furniture". Note that getting slipcovers made is no more expensive than buying sufficient fabric paint for the job, and slipcovers will last longer.

You can learn to make your own slipcovers. There are several books available to teach you how to do this. If you are unable to get all of the excess dye out of your couch, so that dye still crocks off on the clothing of people who sit in it, your best solution will be to make slipcovers that will completely cover up all fabric that contains loose dye.

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