Coloring some Carter's infant bodysuits with Dharma Procion dye.

Some preliminary information

You may not be aware of it, but The Wits End is a small, family owned business. We operate out of our house and do not maintain any stock of tee and onesie blanks; for both financial and logistical reasons. Although, to be honest, that's not entirely accurate since I will sometimes buy a few common colors in a variety of sizes if the local craft stores are having a sale. In addition, the onesies are sold in groups of five. However; in general, if someone needs a particular color and size of shirt or infant bodysuit, I have to go in to town and buy it for the order.

I can buy any color I want, as long as it's white

Today I needed a black 9 month onesie for a Starstuff order:

I Am Made of Starstuff infant bodysuit, yellow on black.

You can't find bodysuits in a solid color here in Corpus Christi. There is one craft store that sells them in pink, blue, and black - but we don't get those because they shrink quite a lot and have a strange shape in general; plus, to be honest, we don't agree with their politics and don't shop there. Aside from all of that, we just prefer the quality of Carter's infant bodysuits, so that is all that we use.

I checked the storage area in the garage to see if I had any black 9 month onesies; I didn't, so that meant that I was going to have to dye one. I use Dharma Procion fiber reactive dyes. Procion dyes dye the fabric strands themselves, rather than just laying a coat of dye over the outside of the strand. This makes them very colorfast, and also safe, in the event that someone's child decides that their clothing looks particularly tasty on any individual day. One issue with the Procion dyes is that they only dye natural fibers. If the item has polyester threads, the threads will not dye. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it tends to give a nice look, like the onesie has a trim and many people like that.

Going to have to make my own

Dyeing properly is a very involved and time consuming process, therefore I never dye only one item. I'll usually select about a pound of tee shirts, onesies, and perhaps some personal items. Today I grabbed a pound of bodysuits, so that I would have some black ones ready for future orders.

Need some salt - lots of salt

The first step is to get some salt. Salt is necessary because both the fabric and the dye are negatively charged and repel each other. The salt alleviates this. Black dye, and in general any dye that contains red needs a lot of salt; about twice as much as other colors do. I needed six cups of salt for a pound of onesies. I use fifty pound bags of water softener pellets for salt. It isn't iodized, and it is simply salt, with no minerals or additives. You may have noticed that I said pellets. The salt needs to be dissolved in warm water, not an easy thing with rock hard pellets.  I keep a blender only used for crafts to chop the pellets up. Extremely noisy and hard on the blender (I've been through a couple now), but it works. For info, all of the items used in dyeing are only used for crafts.  I have them marked and kept separately. 

Getting the dye bath ready

The next step is to paste up some dye. Basically, just adding some water to four tablespoons of black dye powder and mashing it up to create a paste. Since this is black, and black is notoriously hard to do properly, I add a tablespoon of urea. This is also why I used four tablespoons of dye, because it is black - normally, I would only need one tablespoon for a pound of fabric. Urea helps dissolve the dye, and is also a humectant, which helps attract the dye to the water in the fabric. You might be saying: "Ewwww, urea? Isn't that from urine?" Well, yes, it is, but the urea used in this process isn't made from urine, but is instead synthesized from natural gas.  The pasted up dye goes in to the urea, which has been dissolved in about a cup of warm water and is thoroughly mixed together. This mixture is then put into the tote that I use for dyeing, and then I add about three gallons of warm water and the dissolved salt.

Let's turn those puppies black!

Now it is time to add the onesies. The onesies have been pre-washed in some detergent especially made for dyeing, to get all of the sizing and oils out. I wet them thoroughly before adding them to the tote one at a time. Wetting them first keeps them from getting uneven splotches. The onesies get stirred gently for about twenty minutes, and then I add dissolved soda ash in small amounts over a fifteen minute period. The soda ash is a dye fixative and makes the dye job permanent. Following the addition of the soda ash, I'll continue to stir the onesies for an additional hour, since black is a deep color and needs more time.

But let's not turn everything else black....

The onesies then get rinsed until the water runs clear, and I follow this up by washing them and giving them an extra long rinse cycle, followed by a trip through the drier.  The onesie is now ready to be screened and heat set.