After preparing your dye and your fabric, you can go ahead with dyeing your polyester green as needed. How To Dye Polyester To A Pastel Shade As an item gets darker or more saturated, it becomes more difficult to augment its color with an overdye. For example, a very dark blue t-shirt overdyed in red is very likely to end up looking like a slightly warmer very dark blue. Some extremely saturated reds are also difficult to “shift” – no matter what dye you use, it will always have that red tint. Conversely, very light or pale colors can sometimes be “overpowered” with a particularly saturated overdye – for example, generally yellow and blue make green, but if you’re starting with a very pale yellow base, you can in some cases achieve a navy blue that doesn’t have much, if any, green undertone. This, again, is extremely dependent on the item you’re dyeing. Overdye color chart:

Kat has been sewing since her feet could reach the pedals, starting with quilts she made with her mom and eventually graduating to garments. She now makes everything she wears, occasionally teaches classes, and shares her projects on social media. Highlights include her wedding dress, shoemaking, and a love for almost any fabric that comes in hot pink! Read more… You will need enough dye to cover the entire piece of fabric. Usually, one bottle of Rit can cover about 2 pounds of fabric. You can use a kitchen scale to weigh the fabric to see how much dye it will need. It will determine how much dye to use to cover the whole garment. Take a white cloth and dampen it with a commercial stain remover, rubbing alcohol, hairspray, or any clear solvent that is 90% alcohol. Make a red-brown dye using elderberries, red onion skin, pomegranates, beets, bamboo, or dried hibiscus flowers.Then, add the dye to the water and stir it around until it is evenly mixed. Make sure to use stainless steel tongs so that they don’t get stained in the process. Make sure to pre-wash your fabric to remove any chemical residue, dirt, or wax on the fabric, which can affect the remover’s performance. Disperse dye is made up of tiny pigments that are suspended in a liquid. They do not dissolve in water like water-soluble dyes, and they need to be heat-set to attach themselves to the fibers of synthetic materials. Heat up the stove and wait for this solution to start bubbling, then bring down the heat so that the water doesn’t boil, but the bubbles still remain. If your load of whites is now pink, it’s important to follow these steps for the best chance of restoring your clothes to their previous whiteness. Do this before you tumble-dry any of your load, as heat will only further set the colour-bleeding.

Wash your fabric separately with a mild detergent, then air dry. After the fabric is dry, you can see that your color is light enough for you to now dye with the color of choice. Then, you can use a dye of your choice and follow the same steps above to dye the fabric the color that you want. After 20 minutes, carefully remove your fabric from the pot, and rinse it with warm water until the water runs clear. For example, if you want to dye a white polyester shirt pastel blue, you can follow the same steps mentioned above to prepare a dye bath with Rit Dyemore blue dye. Then, submerge your fabric in the dye bath and stir thoroughly, and remove your fabric after about 5 minutes in the dye bath. You can use this chart and list to plan out what color your overdye bath should be. Do keep in mind that results can’t be guaranteed and that different fiber contents and fabric types can impact the outcome of a dye project. The list below anticipates that one of your ingredients is the fabric and one is the dye bath – it doesn’t matter which is which. Once you’ve selected your overdye bath color using the above sections as a reference, the dyeing process will depend on the type of dye you want to use, and the type of fabric your garment is made from. We’ve created some resources that encompass how to dye with box dyes like Rit, Dylon, and iDye as well as specialist dyes like fiber reactive dyes and acid dyes. You can find more information on how to have a successful dye day in these posts:

Can you dye over patterned fabric?

When dye runs in the wash, don't panic – it can be removed! Read on for tips on how to remove dye from white and coloured clothes.