Jacquard iDye Review: Fire Red -and- Dealing with Unexpected Results

I love my blue Old Navy Fishtail Anorak so much that I decided to duplicate it - only the one other color offered totally washed me out. Pfft, like that was going to stop me! Not when flame red dye will set me back all of $5.

Before

I loved my previous results with Jacquard iDye in Chartreuse, so I used this brand again, opting for their Fire Red color, #412.

The instructions say that one packet is good for up to 3 lbs. of fabric, so I weighed my anorak before buying the dye. Only about 1.5 lbs. - single packet it is!

I've already laid out the instructions in the Chartreuse post, so I'll skip right to the oddities of dying this time around:

• This jacket was twice as big as before, and my dye tub remained the same. The fabric didn't come close to "moving freely" as the instructions suggested.

• Probably because of the poor range of motion, I noticed that small specks wanted to settle on the fabric. I scrubbed gently at these with a sponge to avoid super saturated blotches. 

• Check out the "before" image again. I'm pretty sure that's antique brass toned hardware... the after picture is definitely more of a brushed nickel color. I think the heat melted off whatever metal treatment was originally there. 

• Old Navy clearly used thread made of man-made fibers - hence, my natural-fiber dye did not adhere to any of the stitching. I happen to love the contrast stitching effect that resulted, but you may want to keep this in mind for your projects. 

• My anorak was also lined in blended fabric - part cotton, part man-made fibers - consequently, only a percentage of the lining fibers changed color. To avoid this, you'd need to use two types of dye. Jacquard also offers iDye Poly that you can mix in for use with polyester and nylon blends.

Here's a bonus pic of my tub looking like a crime scene during the rinse cycle...

... and behold! The finished product. Complete with oh-so-subtle feline attempt to steal the spotlight. :)

Once again, the iDye color chart was very true to life, and the product was easy to use. I'm a fan!

DIY Review: Jaquard iDye Natural Fiber Dye in Chartreuse

I love utility jackets! I mean, like, really. I'd wear them every day if I could. They're only second to boots as my favorite makes-me-feel-like-I-can-hack-anything clothing articles. This one was a steal on Ebay... alas, that was probably due to the baby chickadee yellow color, which is so not badass and also makes my skin look gray. Eew.
Not to worry - I'm obsessed with dye! At first, I wanted to use one of the dyes I'd already had success with, but I wanted to either dye this jacket olive or citron, and the brands I'd used previously didn't come in those shades, and I have big reservations about mixing my own colors. Enter: Jaquard iDye in chartreuse, which looked close enough to citron for me. Sour, yellow-green? Done. I also like that Jaquard offers special dyes formulated for polyester (but that's a whole 'nother post). Bonus? Since I don't have to mix colors, I only have to buy ONE packet of dye - savings, ahoy!

The directions are pretty standard: stove top method for vibrant color, enough water for the garment to move freely. However, I quickly deduced that my largest pot would not hold enough fabric and water to allow the jacket to move freely. D'oh.





Here's what I did to approximate the suggested conditions:

I filled my pot to the top with hot water from the tap, added the required salt and dye packet, then left the pot on the burner until it was just about to boil. I wet my jacket through with hot water from the tap.

When the water looked hot enough (steaming furiously, with bubbling sounds emanating from the bottom of the pot, near the heat source), I poured the dye bath into a plastic bin normally used when I wash my car at home (read: once a decade). I introduced my wet jacket to the dye bath, spreading the cloth out evenly.

The jacket's position was rotated constantly for 20 minutes, then once every 15 minutes for the next 45 minutes. Between rotations, I weighted down the fabric as much as possible to try and keep most of it in the dye at all times.

The instructions then said to wash with mild detergent. I live in an apartment with shared washing machines, so I was super scared of washing the jacket in there and ruining someone's clothes. Instead I washed in my tub with a finger of my usual detergent Finally, I wrung out and hung up the jacket to dry, making sure that the shoulder seams lined up to the edge of the hanger, as I didn't want the hanger to stretch out the jacket and distort its shape. That's what the pant hanger is all about: it's clamping the fabric in place so the seams don't slide down.

The Results:

• The color is super vibrant, even though the dye bath was not constantly heated throughout the process - yeah!
• The color did not take as well on the thick seaming of the jacket. I have no idea why. It doesn't bother me - in fact, I pretty much love the effect - but it's good to note for the future.
• There are a couple small spots where the color turned out a bit blotchy. From the looks of it, I think extra dye must have settled there while the jacket was hanging to dry. It's possible that machine washing the excess dye out would have prevented this. Luckily, it's a very minor amount and not very noticeable on my rugged-to-begin-with jacket. 

DIY Review: Tulip Fabric Dye

The stars aligned just right: a dress I like is woefully beset with armpit discoloration, and my stove and my bathtub needed cleaning at the same time. Fabric dye time!

The dress in question is a pistachio colored silk dress I bought for a buck. It's never been my favorite color to begin with, but it is breezy and comfy when the temperature starts to skyrocket out here in LA.






I've always used RIT dye in the past, but today I'm trying out Tulip dye, because Tulip offered the color I wanted, no color-mixing required. This means less work and less money, because I would have had to buy multiple boxes of color to achieve the same color with RIT.

Here's a "before" picture of the dress, from back when I spilled BBQ sauce on it while on vacation. :D






The instructions on the back read:

1. Fill bowl or stainless steel sink with one gallon of STEAMING HOT water.
   
2. Stir in 1/4 cup (4 Tablespoons) salt.
   
3. Pour in dye packet and stir until dissolved.
   
4. Submerge fabric in dye mixture.
   
5. Stir continually for 15 minutes, and then occasionally for 45 minutes.
   
6. Rinse fabric in cold water. Wash in warm water and dry away from direct heat and sunlight.

What I did:

1. I wet the dress before inserting it into the dye bath. Previous experience had shown that skipping this step could lead to streaky results.
   
2. I turned my faucet on as hot as it would go, but I didn't see any steam after I filled the pot I would use to hold the dye. Since I've dyed on a stovetop before, I felt comfortable heating the water further with my burner and keeping the heat on for the 15 minute continual-stirring period. My dress also wouldn't stay fully submerged (lots of air pockets), so I tried to stir it very well and make sure that the above-dye-level portions were rotated often.
3. After 15 minutes of continual stirring, I turned off the stove burner and set my kitchen timer for 10 minute intervals. This seemed to be enough to qualify as "occasional" stirring.
4. When it was time to rinse the dye out, I transferred the dress only to a bowl in which to carry them across my carpet and into the bathroom. I had first thought to bring the entire pot to the bathroom, but then had a horrible vision of sloshing dye all over the floor. Bowl it is!
5. Finally, I rinsed my dress in cold water and hung it up to air dry instead of putting it through the wash -- the washing machines in my complex cost $1.50 per load; nuts to wasting that much money on two pieces! I just tried to make sure that as much dye as possible got rinsed out of the fabric.

The results were fantastic! Since I was dying over another color, I wasn't exactly sure of what shade I would get, but the silk turned out this lovely jade green/Tiffany blue color. The fiance thinks it's now his favorite of all my dresses.











I would definitely use the Tulip dye again... in fact, I even got greedy and tried to dye another dress immediately after. The results were pretty splotchy - I do believe the moral of that story is to believe the back of the package when it says it will dye about the same amount of fabric as a men's shirt. Yay for accurate information, but boo for my splotchy dress. Oh well, that just means I'll have to dye it again real soon. :)

DIY: Convertible Handbag

I wanted a black-on-black striped bag. And I wanted it in genuine leather. And I wanted it to sport lots of hardware. And after setting eyes on these highly convertible bags while window shopping in Laguna Beach, I wanted my bag to be a transformer, too.

I couldn't find that hippogriff of a bag anywhere! Surprise, surprise... cue pout.

I sound like Bratty McBratterson, don't I? Well, I'll admit to being a demanding, neurotic control freak, but I think I (sort of) manage to redeem myself by being willing to work for the things I want -- and boy, when I decided to make my dream bag myself, the process turned out to be work. Seriously, this bag started out as two $1 pairs of leather pants, a $0.50 men's shirt, and a bulk order of D-rings. Forcing these disparate elements to play nicely together took a lot out of me - have you ever tried to apply rivets all along a 14-inch length of leather when your rivet gun only has an inch of clearance? No? It's kind of a pain!

However, for about $30 in materials (blood, sweat, and tears are free... provided they're your own, of course), I walked away with a totally custom -- and customizable -- wearable work of art. Poor rivet planning aside, the bag was not that difficult to construct; if you have some basic sewing skills, then it should be pretty easy to make, as you don't even need to finish off edges when working with leather.

• Cut leather pants into strips as long as your desired bag is tall.
• Sew strips together lengthwise until desired bag width is reached.
• Follow instructions for constructing a lined zippered pouch... only, y'know, use your own measurements.

• Use leather scraps and a rivet setter to attach a D-ring anywhere you'd want a handle to be.
• Fashion straps out of leather and secure to lobster clasps with rivets.
• Clip straps to different D-rings to achieve a different look! Here are some examples in backpack mode, foldover mode, tote mode, and crossbody hobo mode.

This tutorial is bag-specific, but the DIY concept is universal - don't short-change your crafting skills. You could end up saving a bunch of money by ripping your own holes in jeans, bedazzling your own tops, or even just hemming your own pants. It's also a rush to sport your new item about town and be able to say, "Oh, this? Yeah... I made it." Crafting isn't just cost-effective - it's empowering, too!

restore to save more: how to dye leather

Those of you who found my blog on the ever-awesome YLF forum (the site that single-handedly restored my faith in kind, supportive women) have already heard heaps on my love affair with leather dye, but I wanted to consolidate all my dye posts into a single how-to before I forget all about them and they fall off the edge of the interweb.

Dyeing for the Perfect Color
My problem this past Fall: I needed to replace my dark brown boots, but I couldn't find anything to fit my calves. One pair came close, but the leather was so soft, the shafts puddled around my ankles. The solution: a damaged pair of Sam Edelman boots at the swap meet (they were these, but damaged on the OTK part). Wrong color, wrong style, but the calf fit like a second skin, and the price was right. Cheap boots + brown dye = experiment time! It might sound scary to some but I prefer to take matters into my own hands, rather than wait for the winds of fate to blow new boots my way.

I chopped off the damaged top of the boots to get them down to the height I liked best, and I reattached the buckle detail where I liked it. Then it was time to bust out Tarrago's self shine leather dye kit in dark brown.

• Step one: Scrub with preparer fluid (provided) to make sure the leather will accept the dye.
• Step two: Use paint brush (provided) to paint dye into seams, crevices, and anywhere else hard to reach with a sponge.
• Step three: Use sponge (provided) to apply dye to boots. Use a circular motion, and don't let the dye glob up - spread it out nice and thin so that the leather can absorb it. Let coats dry.
• Step four: Check out your dye job in various types of light to see if there is a nice, even color. Repeat step three as needed.

You can also use masking tape to protect hardware or other elements that you don't want dyed, but I am pretty steady with a brush (and impatient), so I skipped that part. Didn't matter in the least for me. It seriously was THAT easy. I didn't make a mess, didn't run into any problems.

Dyeing to Erase Damage
Where I undertook the above boot project to satisfy my impatient nit-picky-ness, I decided to dye this bag in order to restore its stained, dirty leather. Dying the bag was a tiny bit harder than dying the boots, simply because there were more design elements to work around: buckles, straps, folds, zippers. However, it was still super easy -- I made it a point to put in as little effort as possible -- and it still turned out really well. I even managed to spilled the preparer fluid all over the bag... Oops. It didn't matter at all. :)
Shortcuts: This time around, I did not paint every single seam (as per the instructions) before using the sponge. I used the sponge from the get-go, and just tried to make sure I got every nook and cranny. This saved a lot of time, because you have to sponge over the brush strokes anyway, in order to prevent glooping and keep a nice, even color.


Hardware Hardships: I make the decision not to tape over much of the hardware, and I also gave dying the zipper fabric a shot. A bit of dye leaked through the zipper fabric, so if you want to preserve your lining *and* dye your zipper, then you should tape off the edges of your lining first. I painted over much of the hardware, then tried to remove it with acetone -- this was a problem, as it was impossible to avoid touching acetone to the leather, and it caused color loss. I ended up rubbing the dye off with tissue, and it came off easily without damaging the leather -- MUCH better.


Leather Love: the leather does NOT feel stiff, and the slouch/movement of the bag was not affected. It's an floppy, unstructured bag, and its movement feels the same as before dying. I would say that if you are dying distressed leather, none of the distressing will carry through. It may seem obvious, but the dye definitely makes the leather look brand new... so don't dye if you need to preserve a super matte/sueded/nubuck type look.


Well, there you have it! Whether you give a so-so item that extra oomph or pull a truly busted item back from the brink of your donation pile, leather dye is your friend. From now on, I will always look past the current condition of a leather item and consider what its condition could be after a quick coat of dye.