Dying Wool?

[Casper]

Quick question... how hard would it be to either dye myself, or have dyed, a wool kilt jacket? I've found some vintage ones that are incredibly cheap, but in some rather hideous colours...

[cacunn]

Check with your local dry cleaner they should be able give you an idea. In general the concept
See what they say here.

http://www.peak.org/~spark/dyeingfelt.html

Lets us know how it goes.

[gilmore]

I have never done it, but I understand that wool can be dyed with cold dye.

Of course, if the colors are hideous now, they might become even moreso with dying. The practical thing to do would be to dye a swatch first, but I would guess that probably isn't possible.

[Casper]

Well, the goal would be to go from a nasty green, to black. In theory, it should more or less dye over whatever colour that's currently there...

[haukehaien]

One problem that you can run into when dying a finished garment is that the thread may either not take the dye at all or may take it differently than the material, which can cause the stitching to become much more visible than you might want. It's a good idea to test the dye on an unobtrusive spot of both material and stitching and see how it turns out.

[Big Mikey]

Quick question... how hard would it be to either dye myself, or have dyed, a wool kilt jacket? I've found some vintage ones that are incredibly cheap, but in some rather hideous colours...

I definitely would recommend AGAINST dyeing yourself! Your are just right being that wonderful caucasian, off-coffee colour!

As for the jacket, I have no idea!

[Pleater]

I used to regularly dye wool for my knitting projects - it is not difficult with yarn and patience, but you need to have the stuff absolutely clean before you start - an invisible food or grease stain can either take up or resist the dye and become very visible.

You need the right dyes for wool, and to have a large container as a dye bath, and be prepared to spend time concentrating solely on the dyeing process.

Black is a difficult colour to get, it requires loads of dye, far more than dark brown, or deep green for instance.

I used to do a lot of dyeing in my hippie days to create things not available in the shops, and used dye strippers, which would literally remove the colour from any surface dyed fibre - some man made fibre is dyed in the vat before it is extruded, so the colour is permanent. That was useful for removing enough colour so that it could be altered or used as a background for other dye effects.

If you can strip out the dye you would then have a lot more options on what colour to dye the jacket, and the result would look cleaner and brighter than over dyeing.

At each stage of the process you need to wash out the chemicals thoroughly - otherwise in a few months the residues can rot the material and it literally falls apart.

If you can get hold of the jackets cheaply then you can experiment to find a good method of dyeing without losing much if it all goes wrong.