Dyeing red wool brown

[treadlightly]

I have a red wool jacket which I want to dye brown. Now there's not much difference in the colours in my mind so should I just use brown dye or is there a colour combination to make brown from red that I've missed?

 

[roman-soldier]

Hi treadlkghtly,
I just asked swmbo and my daughter who is a colour tech hairdresser, the opinion is to
Wash and rinse well
If it's wool use gentle wash or hand wash
use brown Dylon which come in hand or machine washable, swmbo says it's so easy
then soak in salt water (included with dylon)to fix the colour

 

[blacktimberwolf]

Making brown from red isn't easy. .....depending on the hues, red + green will give a greyish brown,........... red + black will give a dark reddish brown,............ Red + yellow to make orange then blue to get a true brown................................red + brown will give a reddish brown similar to mahogony....you could always add a little black to darken it.................all the above is by mixing pure colours of course,you never know how a fabric will react to dye.(or to re-dying)

 

[John Fenna]

Wool is a pig to dye with Dylon ... it takes up very little colour!
The most successful I have been (dyeing a dayglo orange wool blanket to brown) I used about 4 times the expected amount of dylon cold water dye for the weight of fabric and got a russety brown - I just used black dye.
For a natural dye buy 2 boxes of your cheapest generic tea bags and boil the carp out of them to make tea that would turn a elephants head inside out and soak your jacket in this - I use a canoe barrel as a dyebath - for a month or so.
You can check it every so often to see how it is going. Remember that while wet the colour will seem darker than it will when dry. Some colour will wash out with each washing
If you want to check it propperly you will have to let the jacket dry out. Keep the dye so you can drop it back in if needing a bit more colour
Cheap but time consuming...

 

[Toddy]

What John said

Is the jacket 'pure wool', or is it a mixture? and is there much in the way of trimmings ? thread detail ?
If there is, the dye pick up won't be even. The thread is unlikely to be wool, so a dye meant for wool won't do well on it.

Actually, make sure that the Dylon you buy (if you do) clearly says that it will dye wool, they don't all, and only those that are specifically intended for it will work.

You can do a quicker job than a month with the tea though, just wash the jacket to remove any residual conditioner or proofing agents and while it's still wet and warm from the washing immerse it in a similarly hot tea bath (big black bin or a bin bag lined storage box) make sure that it's all immersed, and move it about often.

Time works, but if you raise the temperature of a reaction by 10degC then you cut the time of a reaction in half..........so heating helps speed up the dye absorption

Best of luck with it

cheers,
M

 

[blacktimberwolf]

If the wool is a felt like material, I have heard of some folks successfully dying their felt hats with ....hair dye.......just a thought

 

[Toddy]

Oh it'll work.........but it's an incredibly expensive way to do it; even more so than using Dylon.

Tbh, if it were me, and I didn't want to use the tea method, then I'd buy Acid dye from GeorgeWeil.co.uk or from Chemtex.

Very messy, needs care not to dye everything around, but it'll work and a blooming sight cheaper but it does really, really need careful handling. Even the minute dust particles stains whatever it lands on.

cheers,
M

 

[spandit]

I boiled a pink wool blanket in tea for a few hours and it came out a nice shade of brown

 

[treadlightly]

Thanks folks for all the help.

It's a Pendleton 100 per cent wool jacket, bright red. I think I'm going to try John and Toddy's suggestion of a tea bath. I presume warm not hot is the way to go as I don't want it felted and shrunken??