Which Dye is Best: A Semi-Scientific Experiment

I have no intention of dying anything at the moment, but I thought I'd take a moment to express my appreciation for your experiments--they were a lot of fun to read through and very informative if it happens to come up in the future~.

 

Amazing experiment! So much useful info, especially regarding dye removal!! Thanks I'm definitely going to try some of these techniques.

 

I love love love the dye removal part, so helpful! I'm considering dyeing a future doll a darker tan,and this really helps.

 

The tutorials and this thread are brilliant! I want to colour a small doll quite a light shade - would the procion dyes do the trick do you think? I have those in the craft cupboard already, and it looks as if it would be easier to build up the shade gradually using those rather than the deep, rapid colours the dispersal dyes give!

 

@fjm123

Procion dyes are fiber reactive dyes designed specifically for fibers such as cotton, linen, rayon, and ramie, not synthetics like polyurethane resin.

You will have a much more consistent and even result with dyes designed specifically for synthetics like iDye Poly, Rit Dyemore, and Pro Chemical and Dye PROsperse. (Even though I hate this dye because it is crap, regular Rit dye--not Dyemore which is specifically designed for synthetics--is going to work better than Procion dyes.)

 

Thanks - I will have to hunt for a suitable synthetics dye. Or just give her a face up, green blushing and a wig and see if that brings her to life!

 

I've read accounts of people getting lighter colours by only adding a small amount of dye to the water, if that helps?

 

I may try that. My experience with most dyes is that the fabric grabs as much dye as it can take for a given temperature/chemical combination/etc, so a weak solution only works up to a point. There are so many variables, and with just one doll to dye not much room for experimentation. She/he decidedly wants to be brown, though, so we may have to take the plunge and hope for the best.

 

A random question for the more experienced dye masters in this thread; does anyone know why pieces of my doll would be completely different colors from the same dye bath?

So...here's the story:

I dyed my first doll today, my sister's dc william. The base doll was white that I cleaned it thoroughly with both a soapy water scrub and a wipe down with alcohol while I waited for my giant pot of water to boil.

She wanted a grey color for her little gargoyle, so I mixed in equal parts of a Rit Dyemore frosty grey and iDye Poly in Gun Metal grey.

The pieces were dyed for 3 and a half minutes (give or take) in this order: legs - tail/lower body - upper body - head - wings.

Now the first pieces dipped have blue shadowing to them and a bronze highlight if you hold them in the light, but for some reason when I got to the wings they came out a sandy bronze color - not a speck of grey or bluish tint in sight. =_=; I even put them in for longer than the rest of the pieces because I noticed they weren't picking up color like the others had.

Now I asked my sister if she wanted me to re-dye them, she said no because it looks neat and she likes it, but does anyone know why this would have happened? And how can I prevent it from happening again?

Was it because I mixed dyes? Or that they were old (they were both dyes I found on clearance at a local craft store)? Or could it be from me not using the full amount of each dye?

I know my water was hot enough because I put the lid back on the pot between each dip so that I could keep the dye boiling while I scrubbed the previous parts clean. :\ I'm just at a loss for why pieces from the same dye bath would turn out so different.

 

@kaien

I agreed with @Tokoz that it's likely a different resin formulation issue, but to really be able to provide good explanations and advice we need pictures.

Would you mind posting a photo?

 

I took a few photos last night while I was cleaning up the pieces that I can share.

Here is the one of how the parts looked with flash;


Willa; post dye bath with flash by Dotty Kai, on Flickr

 

@kaien

It definitely looks like the resins for the wings and the body are different. If the color difference was less severe, I might think it was an evaporation issue.

Was the pot the same temperature throughout the process or did it cool before dyeing the wings?

 

@americanseamstress I'd say the water for the wings was hotter. X_X When I opened the lid to dye the wings, it was at a steady rolling boil.

As for the evaporation; about a cm of water had evaporated while I was dyeing everything. My dye pot is a giant pot that was previously used for canning, so it's huge, but I didn't think it would change the color that drastically. It's like all of the blue/grey was soaked up by the other pieces and just left the tan/bronze for the wings. I have no idea. o-o Maybe I need an alternate pot?

 

@kaien

The last question was just to have all bases covered. I'm pretty sure that it's just a difference in resin formulation between body and wing. Are the wings different in any way from the body (color, translucency, texture, tooth, shine, etc.)?

I've been dyeing different body parts to match for some time now, and it frequently happens that one company's resin will dye differently than another. The solution is to dye to appearance of the resin, and not the amount of time in the pot or the pot color. (Depending on resin and color, a purple dye pot can dye a resin brown, for example, if it is normal skin.)

If I were you, I'd buy some blue or purple Rit Dyemore or iDye Poly and use this to color correct the wings to match the rest of the resin pieces.

When I dyed the head below to match Artifex Kindred/Twigling resin, the initial dye job was far too yellow so I made a dye pot consisting entirely of yellow dye and redyed the head to match. It is possible to redye the wings in a totally different dyebath to cover over the first attempt, as I have done this multiple times.

Spoiler: Leftmost Doll Head

 

Thank you for this!

 

Since I used your tutorial I thought I'd post my recent dyeing project here. I used orange brown and black iDye poly on my Doll Chateau Hugin. I also used low temp hot glue on his teeth so they wouldn't dye, since even low temp glue's melting point is 100 degrees above boiling water I knew it wouldn't melt away. So here is my dip dye rotting pumpkin cat ghost thing, called "Hallo, pawful". Next is his faceup but that is another story.
6 by SteamWitch, on Flickr
6a by SteamWitch, on Flickr9 by SteamWitch, on Flickr11 by SteamWitch, on Flickr
Thank you for your wonderful tutorial.

 

He is adorable!

 

Thank you!

 

I've been wanting to dye my white DC Andre for a while now but I've been too afraid to do so. This in depth tutorial was not only funny but informative as well! Thank you so much for your torso's sacrifice.

 

THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!! Im planning on dyeing my DIM Laia and Fairyland body together to hybrid,ive bought Rit Dyemore but now im thinking of using IDye poly instead, have you ever used the Rit Dyemore?

 

I have! It yields similar results to Idye Poly. It is a little easier to use than ipoly though, because it s a liquid already, so it’s all already dissolved. If you’d like, later tonight I can show you the red I achieved with it.

 

Id love to see it

 

I dyed another doll today - this time with the Rit Dyemore! (Last time I used the IDye poly)

It worked out beautifully!

The doll in question was a ten year old white skin minifee/old dz body hybrid I'd had for years, that I wanted to turn a more normal skin color because he was severely yellow. I used Sandstone with a little bit of the super pink, which turned out to be a good idea as the sandstone has a very yellow undertone to it.



I did notice when dying that compared to the Idye poly the water had to be boiling to achieve ANY color change - I tested his elbow peanuts and they remained the stubborn white skin until the water was bubbly, and the pink wouldn't take unless it was very bubbly. When I used Idye poly I was able to do it just simmering, and the color was immediate - a few seconds, whereas with the Dyemore I counted to 15 seconds for each set of pieces.

On the other hand, I noticed little to no smell with the Dyemore, even when it was boiling, so that's something to consider if you're sensitive to fumes.

Due to the color not changing until it hit a boil, I was a little impatient and perhaps added a little more dye than I needed, but he ended up being maybe a shade or two darker than my normal skin DZ hid which is only a few months younger in age, so overall I'd call it a success.

In yellow light its almost hard to tell there's a difference:



It was dark by the time I finished, but I'll come back and add natural light pictures when I can for reference.