Modification Dyeing DF-H Oswin NS Yellow to Tan with Rit Dyemore

I've been wanting to shell Franz, a favorite OC/historical figure of mine (it's...complicated) and contemporary descriptions mention that he was perpetually suntanned. I couldn't find a company with a color that matched what I had in mind so dye it is!

I did not take photos of my first attempts, but using 3 tablespoons of Sandstone alone in 2 gallons of water turned my test pieces bright yellow so I quickly wiped it off and went hunting for Chocolate Brown as a more cool-toned alternative. I ended up using 1 tablespoon each of Chocolate Brown and Sandstone in 2 gallons of water along with a teaspoon of dish soap per the Rit instructions.



Dye setup with bamboo skewers. Steam burns are not a joke, give yourself some distance from the surface of the pot! Ideally I would cut the yarn to a length where I could just set the skewers down on the pot but some of the pieces were too big to do that without constantly bumping them into the bottom or the walls.




(The lights on one side of my kitchen are brighter: the pieces are all the same darkness in person!) Once I got the pot to a good boil and figured out the proper timing (between 1 minute and 1 minute 10 seconds for the larger pieces) the process went pretty smoothly. I did run into issues with the torso piece as part of it was hot glued in place and it partially melted. This caused small pieces of glue to stick to other parts of the torso and it did leave small dark stains in some areas. They're small enough that I could probably incorporate them into the body blushing but something to keep in mind if you have a body with glued pieces.

Another thing I noticed: when the water was extremely hot the pieces came out with a slightly mottled pattern. I don't know what exactly caused it but I suspect that it was due to bubbles rising and bursting against each piece as the water boiled. Again, this was something that I didn't mind for this character (It almost makes the skin look more realistic?) but it may be more apparent on darker skintones and fantasy colors. I turned the heat down to just below a roiling boil for the face and hands/feet and they came out in a uniform color.




Ah, jointed hands, my nemesis. I'm pretty sure DF-H makes their jointed hands out of a different resin than their full dolls because despite being teeny tiny the hand pieces didn't reach this color until after a full 2 and a half minutes in the dye, twice as long as the biggest body piece. Restringing them took me twice as long as everything else that happened in this post. I switched the original tiny S hooks for gold jewelry wire hooks as the gold looks better with this tan.



Here he is with his head on. I left the headcap untouched partially because I don't know how well the DF-H logo on the back will hold up in boiling water, partially so I'll always have a sample of this company's resin for future reference. I won't really know how this tan looks until tomorrow when there's daylight again but I'm glad I took the plunge and dyed him!

Bonus observations:

- The dye highlighted some rough sanding on the inside of the legs and torso and they're...not as well finished as I'd expect? I'm still new to the hobby so I'm not sure how much doll insides get sanded during production.

- There are random patches of rougher texture all over the doll. The biggest patches are right on the cheeks but as you can see from the photo they didn't affect the dye at all. Weird