The best way to dye fabrics and garments for longevity and brilliance is, hands down, using professional dyes like Dharma Procion Fiber Reactive Dyes, or Acid dyes for wool and silk, and going through all the steps, chemicals and measuring. But, we don’t always have the time and/or energy for doing things the ‘long way’. Maybe we need a ‘quickie’ for a party or costume, or to renew a faded or stained garment, or, gosh darn it, we only want to dye one or a few garments and we don’t want leftover dyes and chemicals. So we have a new product – iDye - for a no muss-no fuss basic dye job. Just pre-wash your items, toss a packet into your washing machine with hot water (or a large pot to simmer it on the stove for a bit), add some household salt or vinegar depending on the fabric, and that’s it. Dyeing has never been easier.

iDye comes in 38 colors — 30 colors for 100% natural fabrics such as cotton, silk, rayon, wool, and linen, and 8 colors for polyesters and nylons. Each iDye packet contains 14 grams of pure dye powder (no fillers like grocery or drug store dyes) and will dye 2 to 3 pounds of fabric (or more for lighter colors). For the darker colors, more intense color or synthetics, simmering on the stove will provide the best and most colorfast results, but otherwise, a washing machine with regular hot water is the easiest way to go.

For those of you who remember Deka L, this dye is the closest thing for sale in this country to that old favorite. Like Deka L, iDye is also what is called a "direct" dye. It has reasonable washfastness and lightfastness, is not as fade proof and color fast as Procion or Acid type dyes, but way better than the brands you will find at your local market whose names shall remain nameless. In our tests it worked very well on silk, cotton, and rayon. The iDye Poly worked fine on our nylon fabric and a polyester garment one of our employees had, as long as we simmered that one on the stove. **But CAREFUL, all Polyesters and Nylons are not created equal - some are made to be dyed and a few aren't. Has to do with patents and treatments and molecular structure. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell by tags or by looking. You just have to TEST. We did not get such great results on feathers or wool and still recommend Acid dye as the dye of choice for those. We also found that we got better results when we dyed each batch all the same type of fabric, ie. didn't mix rayons and cottons in the same dye bath. But we did get very even level results and pretty bright colors! We do recommend washing finished garments in cool water with like colors after the initial washout in hot water to get out the excess dye.

One of the great things about iDye is that the packet dissolves in water, so there is no handling of messy dye powders or chemicals. Just throw the dye packet in the hot water, add household salt or vinegar, depending on your fabric, stir or agitate in your machine 30 minutes, then wash it out. It is the ultimate easy way to get color!

Conforms to ASTM D-4236. Keep out of reach of children and pets. Avoid inhalation and contact with eyes. Made in the USA.