construction:body:dyeing

Dyeing

Dye resources

BigBadWolf's pages on dyeing fur http://fursuits.wereanimal.net/coloring.htm and http://fursuits.wereanimal.net/furdye2.htm

Createx's page on dyeing suggestions - GREAT PAGE! - http://www.createxcolors.com/product_lines/liquid_fiber_dyes.htm

Paula Burch's page on hand dyeing fabric - http://www.pburch.net/dyeing.shtml

Someone mentioned somewhere using Manic Panic, and it did stick to the fur better than RIT did.


From: Teddy Ruxpin
Subject: FL: Dying for experience..Re:

From: Aetobatus

Just wondering if anyone has experience dying Monterey Mills 100% acrylic furs?

I have. The Tiresta puppet I just finished is made from white 100% acrylic fur, dyed various shades of grey and black. I have also tested red, and that works too. Here's the method:

Use RIT dye, either liquid or powder. You need a large pot to boil it in - stainless or aluminum, big enough to cover the fur you need to dye. I cut out the pattern pieces before dying so I did not have so much to dye. Process ALL pieces you need the same color at the same time! You need some kind of spacer in the bottom of the pot like an open wire grid so that the fur cannot touch the bottom of the pot, and you need to be able to stir the fur in the pot while it is boiling.

Put enough water in to cover the fur and allow for stirring. Don't leave the fur in to pot yet! Put salt in the water - I used 1/2 cup salt for 3 quarts of water. Add dye. 3 ounces of liquid black to 3 quarts of water turned about 2 sq ft of 3/4“ fur a good black. You will have to experiment. Stir water/dye/salt and heat the pot on the stove until it is all dissolved. If you use Rit powder dye, dissolve it in hot water in a glass bowl first, then decant the SOLUTION into the pot. Try dissolving any solid grains left in more hot water. If you get undissolved grains in the pot you will get bright spots in the fur!

Wet the fur well - run cold tap water on it and wring it out several times so it is all wetted, then shake it out flat and add to the simmering dye. Stir well. Stir more. If you do not stir well, you will get lighter patches in the fur. Make sure fur does not remain folded for long, or the crease line ends up lighter. When you guess it may be dyed enough, lift the fur out and drain off (squeeze carefully) the excess hot dye into the pot. (The black dye job I mentioned above was boiled for 30 mins. Others have told me that 5 mins would have done. Experiment.) Put the fur under COLD running tap water. The excess liquid dye will be flushed off but the fur fibers will retain the color. After a couple of minutes the rinse water should run clear, and the dye will be permanently on the fur.

To dry the fur, first wring it, then shake it or whip it to centrifuge out water, then spread out flat in a warm area on newspaper and start brushing. As it dries brush more to get the pile straight again. Brush it left, then up, then right, then down to get the fibers all running in the same direction. It has to be fairly dry before it aligns well. NOTE that the look and feel of the fur is very different after its dyed. Much like after washing fur - it never looks quite like new. It will shed a lot. Cheap fur might shed to the point of looking ratty.

You can reuse the dye in the pot - add more dye, or use as-is for a lighter shade. RIT dye is apparently not poisonous, but the high salt content means don't get it in your eye. The fumes from boiling it are not at all bad, does not stink the house up.

The Rit instructions say wear gloves and clean up with bleach. Neat bleach on a rag rubbed on unfortunate dye splashes on counter tops has worked for me - wear rubber gloves!


O.K. - I found my own notes while packing, so here's the info, off of a NFT letterhead sheet …

  HOW TO USE TEXTILE RESOURCE DYES

1) Airbrush
 a) Mix 50% color, 50% binder
 Add water to consistency of creme
 Mixed colors should drip slowly from mixing stick.

2) Handpainting
 a) Mix 50% color, 50% binder
 Add water as needed to flow easily onto fabric
 Add CP-X clear (thinned with water) to produce mix that is easier
    to brush on
 Suggested mix: 1) 2/3 thinned clear, 1/3 binder
                2) Add color to desired shade
                3) add water to thin as needed
                   add CP-X clear to thicken

3) Heat Setting after Drying
   1) Household Iron at Medium (275-375 degrees F) (135 - 190.5
      degrees C)  
      Use cloth or paper between iron and material to prevent scorching.
   2) Oven heat or gas tumble dryer

<<< end of quote >>>

The binder as mentioned above can be found somewhere around the airbrush listings, if they'd quit moving things around so much… - http://www.dickblick.com/categories/airbrush/


From: Joe Dunfee
Subject: Re: Dye Follies

“Cheetah” Bowen Goletz writes;

I've found a fabric sold under the name Ultra Velour that may be
what I've been looking for.
I'll start cold dying swatches of the cream to come up with solid
gold and solid amber, but need a method to come up with spots!
I'd also like to be able to do black on brown rosettes. One
thought was to slightly dilute liquid rit dye and airbrush the
spots. Before I make an incredible mess,any input from the list?

There is alot written on the art of “painting” with dyes. It is done alot on silk. With silk, a “resist” (commonly melted wax) is first painted on to restrict where the dye will go. The cloth is then either dyed and the parts with wax don't accept the dye. Or sometimes the was is simply used as a barrier to keep the dye from spreading from an area that was painted. Another technique I have read about involves adding a thicking agent to the dye so that it can be painted on the fabric and it won't spread out. I recomend contacting a company called Pro-Chem, they have a very thorough catalog and sell all the necessary stuff. 1(800)2BUY-DYE


From: Farallon Seal
Ron Orr writes;

black spots, but all I've found is solid cream. I'll start cold dying
swatches of the cream to come up with solid gold and solid amber, but
Hot dying would also work since it's mostly cotton. Either method should
work well since it is a “natual” fiber.

As an aside, I did some all acrylic fur dying tests this weekend specifically for doing spots. I didn't try one of the previously mentioned dyes made for staining plactic but we used about 12 different substances including acrylic paint, glass stain, permanent markers, rit dye, and on and on. The rit did NOTHING, and at the oposite extreme was the acrylic paint. But even after one washing only about 50% of the paint remained on the fibers making the spots look very faded, and it was obvious that what was left wouldn't stay too long. The 'permanent' markers ran and stained the surrounding hairs. Another problem with ALL of the above methodes was that it was impossible to stain all the hair down to the root and including the backing. This made the spots look to me like they were painted on rather than naturally that color.

Then I got out my electric razor and shaved down a couple of spots in the light fur and cut similarly shaped spots out of black fur and hot glued them on. In the end this method looked INFINATELY better than any of the dyes and overall probably didn't take any longer to do.

For doing stripes or any other coloration changes that are > 2” wide, I've found that cutting the fabric and sewing the stripes togeather or hot gluing the fur and stripes to a backing produced great looking results. I've now concluded that this is the only way to really produce acceptable color changes of any size on acrylic fur. Although for small spots shaving the fur and gluing the new spot onto it worked well and fairly quickly.

Next time I'll have to try dying and staining mohair fur… It would be nice to be able to produce gradual color gradations from arm to paw or back to belly on occasion.


From: Flinthoof Sharis
Other dye solutions to try include black and brown leather shoe DYES, not polish. We use 'em in model railroading for a lot of weathering stains when mixed with denatured alcohol as the thinning agent. Permanent on the clothing I've accidentally spilled on, much to my dismay. I really liked that shirt. :/

/home/furryfursuit/faq/data/pages/construction/body/dyeing.txt · Last modified: 2011/08/11 12:01 (external edit)

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