Hi guys! I recently found this pair of Sears coveralls on Ebay and have been trying to dye them for the past week.The spruce green base is perfect but they were just too light for my liking, so I’ve been trying to add a bit of charcoal/black to darken them up. The worn pics are what they looked like prior to the dyeing and the hanger ones are what they look like now. Not much difference at all, right? These things have gone through 4 different dye processes, and to my eyes they look almost no different than before. Based on how they felt compared to my Roebucks I thought they had significantly more cotton in them, perhaps even 100% cotton, but based on just how difficult they’ve been to dye I’m sure they’ve got a high poly percentage. I figured that I would walk through each dye process and go over what I think went wrong, and then give my idea of what I think might finally dye them effectively.
1st dye bath- used graphite Rit dyemore. Did them in a cold washing machine cycle for roughly an hour. This was when I still thought they were 100% cotton , so I figured they’d dye pretty easily.
2nd dye bath- used graphite dyemore again. did them in a hot washing machine cycle for roughly 30 minutes. I feel like I didn’t let the bath go for long enough, and now I’m convinced that my washing machine doesn’t get the water hot enough to be effective
3rd dye bath- local craft store ran out of dyemore, so I got a bottle of normal black Rit. Did them in a hot washing machine cycle for roughly an hour. I feel like these coveralls are going to need a poly dye if they’re going to dye at all.
4th dye bath- Went out and got the materials needed for the stove top method of dyeing. Used black tulip dye, which says on the package that it works with poly/cotton blends. Did them in a bath with constant stirring/agitation for exactly 45 minutes
The main things that I’ve learned from these methods are that in order to dye these things is that they’re probably going to need a poly dye, I’m definitely going to be using the stove top method, and I will probably need to make the bath longer. Taking all of this into account, my new plan is as follows:
A 45 minute stove top bath using black idye poly, and then if that seems to work but not get the color right, do a longer bath.
What do you guys think? do you think this will finally dye them? I saw that some of you have had success with tulip and even regular old rit when dyeing your coveralls, so I’m certainly open to advice on how to do that. Also, one thing that I have been doing that might be detrimental is running the coveralls through a rinse cycle after each dye bath before drying them, but I don’t think that doing this would take out ALL of the dye. I also have not been using a fixative, which might be worth trying.
Here are the pictures:
