Rob has a favorite hat, which is an Afghan shepherd’s hat called a pakol. He’s had several of these over the years, but the one he wears to the winery is the most comfortable. It is also, unfortunately, undyed wool and so over the years the sweat and wine stains made it somewhat…disreputable.
This weekend we decided — and by we, I mean “I” — we decided that I had become my mother and that the only possible compromise would be to dye it to cover the stains. Here is the before picture, after Rob washed it twice to remove the worst of the dirt. Twice.
Usually, I use the washing machine when I want to dye things, but with wool you run the risk of it felting from the agitation. So I grabbed our largest soup pot, dumped in three gallons of water, a cup of white vinegar, and the entirety of a bottle of Rit “wine” dye. I could have gotten away with a half bottle, but I wanted it to be really dark and intense. I stirred it on and off for half an hour and voila…
I say, voila, but really, that encompasses five rinses, washing, and another two rinses, but at the end of that, voila!
A wine red that is so dark it is almost black. Rob says that it is Petit Syrah.
And I say that it is no longer disreputable.
Very nice! You may need to do another vinegar rinse to set it with cold water at some point, but it looks really good! I was just thinking that I need to re-dye some black pants of mine. Maybe this will be my January project!
(PS, I also like Jacquard dyes for animal fibers. They work a whole lot better than RIT, which works best with plant fibers.)
Thanks for the tip.
Years of being a knitter! And a very short stint at yarn dyeing my own yarn. It’s harder than it looks. Lol. You did a great job! It’s the perfect color.
I roomed with a textile major and picked up enough to be able to dye things for puppetry without major incident. Didn’t know about the Jacquard dye though.
That is definitely Petit Syrah, yes. And now the further stains will be hidden.
La! The previous condition simply would not do!
(Becoming my mother — yeah, me too. Although it would be pretty neat to become your mother, she sounds cool.)
Dyeing. Dyeing. It’s an easy mistake. Every year around Easter I feel compelled to make a spelling PSA when I see everyone’s posts about those poor dying eggs.
The hat is awesome!
Ooh, cool! I have an old drover’s hat from Australia that’s seen better days. Might be time to dye it.
We keep a cheap enameled steel pot (canning section of general store) just for dying. Safe than sorry and all that.
Turned out very nice. I don’t like all the extra rinsing with RIT… it has a direct dye in it alongside an acid dye, which is what the wool picks up. So all that rinsing is to get rid of the non-reacted direct dye.
You can use fiber reactive dyes (the dye used for tie dyeing) on wool pretty successfully with added acid (like vinegar). Pro Chem & Dye has a nice instruction sheet here: http://www.prochemical.com/directions/MX_ImmersionWool.htm