Dyeing Rayon Shirting

So I finally got around to dyeing 3 yards of my 10 yards of  rayon shirting that I purchased from Fabric.com. As I mentioned in this post I love the look of this dress featured on Make This Look.

pattern is actually Simplicity 2180

Now I am still trying to decide if this pattern is really the one I want to use, the sleeve caps aren't the same and the back bodice is completely different but it is nice too. I would have to do gathers instead of darts, so that is an easy design change and I could try altering the back bodice piece to give it the rounded neckline of the original dress instead of the v-neck of the pattern (I would use view D/E's back bodice design instead of the ties & elastic of view A), but after seeing some versions on flickr.com I am liking the back neckline.

Back to the fabric.  

I decided to go the stove top route since I wasn't sure how well the rayon would take the dye, even after reading up on it at Ritdye.com. I already had a bottle of Wine dye in my stash, though now I am wishing it was a little more of a bright red, any way that is what I used.

 I followed the usual instructions of wetting the fabric, diluting the dye in the water then adding the fabric. I used my largest pot (a canning pot) to do this.

I let the fabric simmer on the stove for nearly 30 minutes then rinsed it in the sink with

 warm water for a bit.

I finished the rinse process by placing the fabric in my washing machine in an "extra large" load cycle so there would be plenty of water. Did this a couple of times to get all the extra dye rinsed out then finally did a regular wash cycle with detergent and dried it in the dryer on low.

The fabric isn't the bright red of the inspiration dress but it is a nice color. After laying it out to fold it up I did notice some color variations that I am attributing to doing this on the stove-top & needed to have more water so that everything would move more freely; so, in the future, I won't be doing stove-top dyeing unless it is a smaller cut of fabric. I should note that the recommended amounts of fabric  to dye are 2 lbs or 3 lbs, my 3 yards of rayon are just over 2 lbs.

  I couldn't let the extra dye in the pot just go down the drain so I tossed some larger knit remnants in the washing machine with some water and dumped in the pot of dye. I ran the longest agitation cycle I could then a regular wash cycle with an extra rinse.


Before dumping the dye in the washer I figured I'd try to get an idea of the color change, so I put small swatches in the pot & let them sit for the 30 minutes. The stove-top color is definitely darker but I didn't feel like messing with the stop-top again so as mentioned, I just dumped it all in the washing machine.

I really like the new color I got with this "remnant" - I have enough of this to make myself a top,yay!

I have some new fabric I need to get sewing up into something so I think I'll get busy. Hope this helps someone, I know I learned a little more about dyeing fabric.

Have a good day and Blessed Be, Alyssa