Now that my pistol belts, flightsuit are on the way via UPS I have yet another question.
RIT Dye
I know its sold in a lot of grocery stores and is easy to find. Also it says you can use it in the washing machine (which is what I was planning on doing)
My question is How did you die your Pistol Belts and/or Flightsuit? Did you toss it all in the washing machine with a whole box of RIT dye or did you soak it?
I have never dyed anything before so I am kinda curious how this works and how I will get that gun metal grey.
ahh I’m trying to recall my experiences. It is easy to find black, yellow and other colors at Wal Mart and everywhere. I think the Pearl Gray most people use in the suit, it may be found at craft places like Michaels, Hobby Lobby and other places where they have more colors and whatnot.
Washing Machine. Yeah just put it in following the instructions of the cycles. I don’t have the package with me so I don’t know exactly what it was. I was kinda hesitant as a lot of people are dying their suit not knowing what to expect so I did I think maybe half a pack or something and would go through the cycles and see the results then I think I ended up doing the whole pack. I eventually did more Pearl Gray I think. I forget what recipe a lot of people recommend since a lot of people differ on the mixture of gray/khaki they want.
I think Thiago did his desert tan suit he said with 5 packs of Pearl Gray and his suit looks awesomely gray but again that was desert tan and not khaki so I’m not sure. Maybe other people will share their recipes. I’m personally having a hard time remembering mine. I think I did 2 or 3 packs? It was the box and not the liquid. I guess its harder to dye something dark like khaki something lighter like gray so I think some people use color remover first. I’m not sure about that though. I wanna say just little by little see what works for you and it probably will look a little darker when its wet. I’d kinda open it up once in awhile to see what it was looking like. :lol:
I don’t know about soaking it though. I just went through the cycles. I’m pretty content with the color of my suit I think. haha I was so happy just to have a suit when it was straight khaki, then the more I looked at it, I went “what the hell, I’ll go for it” so I’m glad to say I was just a little adventurous! Mine like everyone elses, shows up different in different lights. I just found out it looks a nice shade of gray on camera in the sunlight. Weird how different it looks indoors under the light with flash and without on the right. That one with the flash almost looks like the yellow Rubies suit. :?
In conclusion, hopefully this gives some kind of info on dying. I guess, take your time and it’s easier to do it little by little testing it rather than have to remove color and stuff later or get another suit. My mom was really helpful in this aspect of the costume. And yes this post was too long. :lol:
yeah that’s why you run a cycle with hot water, detergent and bleach after you’re done. The RIT package tells you the instructions of how to clean up after you’re done ^^
Thanks a bunch, I was not sure because i have never used this dye and this is good info.
I was looking at RIT dye a few years back and I remembered you are instructed to use it in the washing machine and such but I dont know a prop builder would do it so I wanted to ask before I got into this.
Odds are I am doing the flight suit too because I can see the diffrence it makes. Since I am already dying the belt I might as well
Actually the RIT dye gives instructions for not only the washing machine but a method for the stovetop as well. You just put a big tub of water on the stove and place the item to be dyed in the pot.
I’ll try to get a good washing machine recipe together and specify as much as possible if once I get my suit I can get the color in a minimal amount of attempts. If nothing else, I will write down all my steps so that if someone is really needing a recipe and thinks that much of my suit they can replicate it without any problem.
There are people here who say to use 5 packs of dye. Unfortunately, 5 packs of dye in the washing machine at once would probably not turn out the same as 5 separate cycles with one packet of dye each. That is where I get lost. When people say that they used 5 packs I wonder if it was all at one time or if they dyed the suit 5 times. I’d think at some point the water would become saturated and the extra dye would simply float around with 5 packs mixed together.. Same as if you put a pinch of dye in a whole tub of water and ran the uniform through hundreds of times until all the dye was used up- it would probably not show up at all on the suit.
I know the reason I don’t post up pictures or a how to is because I dyed and redyed my first suit so many times that I can’t tell someone the way to dye it by simply posting the recipe used in the final cycle. All the previous cycles leading to that point probably contributed to the finished product.
Now the other question I have in my head. Did you use black dye for the belts or grey?
I am going to use grey for the suit. Since the belts are white I am curious if one cycle with black will give the color or will the white belt now be jet black?
I am just wating on my patches and then I can dye and finish my uniform. I know not to dye it with the patches on :lol:
I was going to say black but the answer isn’t as obvious as it seems. There are some people here who dye their flight suits with black dye and they come out looking a darker shade of khaki. I guess it all depends on the amount of black dye used in proportion to the amount of water and the material to be dyed (if it is treated with any kind of stain resistant chemical, polyester, cotton, etc.). There may also be differences depending on whether you use the stovetop method or the washing machine method.
Please don’t take this as gospel as I don’t want to be the one whose advice ruined your belt but I believe if worse came to worse you could always remove the bulk of the black with color remover.
Hope someone who has actually dyed one of these things can chime in here.
I tried Pearl Gray for the belt but it just came out too light for me. I think I did the belt in the stovetop with some black. It came out a nice medium type gray. I’m positive it wasn’t the whole thing of black but I forget how much. Be sure to see how it looks when its dry. :lol:
I know nothing here is the final word so no worries on that :lol:
In prop building its I like to hear other peoples stories and mistakes so I can formulate a plan for myself and see what happens.
I was going to do the suit and belts at the same time in black but after seeing Zack mention Pearl Grey I thought twice. So I bought 3 boxes of Grey and one black.
I am going to do the belts in the washer with the black and then the suit with the grey then clean out the washer so any extra black will carry over to the suit
I dyed my elbow pads and belt at the same time using one pack of Pearl Grey and two gallons of REALLY hot water. I put the water into a foam ice chest (which I don’t suggest cause it will drip out between the foam particles a bit) and poured the dye in and stirred it to dissolve. Then I added the pads and belt and stirred it for maybe 10 or 15 mins. The belt came out a darker shade of grey than the pads, and one of the pads had streaks in it BUT once I put them in the wash to get the excess dye out the streaks vanished and the belt turned out the exact shade of grey I wanted. I might re-dye the pads to get a darker shade of grey though, I think they could have stayed in the dye bath a bit longer. As for the uniform, I haven’t dyed mine yet, but I plan on using RIT Color Remover and then one box of Pearl Grey at a time until I get the shade I want.
i just dyed my uniform yesterday, without using my landlord’s (aka, my mother’s) washing machine. I did this with two boxes of rit pearl gray @ the same time…no original color remover @ all. I dissolved the two boxes of dye with 4 cups hot water while filling a stainless steal sink with about 4 gallons (totally estimating) of more hot water. wet the suit with warm water. added the dye to the hot water in the sink. reread the instructions on the box, noticed the bit about a cup of salt (got scared to put a whole cup in), and dumped a couple tablespoons in. Then i plopped the damp flight suit in, and meant to stir the bath with a pair of chopsticks for the suggested 30 minutes…that actually lasted only 2-3 minutes. I thought about fully submerging the suit somehow and devised a strictly scientific method of doing so :D. I located a large bucket, filled it with more water (hot, of course), and plunged it into the bath so the suit would not surface. I then marched back to my couch to watch the rest of my rented DVD form Netflix (The Rome series from HBO if you must know). One hour later, i took the bucket out, stirred a bit with the chopsticks, and emptied the sink. Rinsed the suit w/ warm water, plopped it into the washing machine, and did a normal cycle w/ cold water and a little detergent.
This may not be the best “recipe” out there, but as you can see, it’s fresh in my mind and via the pictures below, you can see that it works im quite pleased with the outcome.
sigh I was so anxious I sewed my patch and nametag the second I got it which means its pretty much too late to dye it unless I perform surgery. Ugh. Someday I am just going to bite the bullet and buy one of those premade suits.
hahahahahah! just like what i did…when i saw how cool it looked dyed i felt like this: :walterpeck: then while i was performing patch surgery it was a little like this :boogieman: re-attaching them was even more of a pain : :angryvigo: in the end i was like . TRUST ME, the effort and pain (yes i poked myself with the needle many times) IS TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!
I work at a grocery store and someone asked me if I happened to know where it was…of course I did. I was looking for it two days ago when I was thinking about dying the uniform.
im quite pleased with the outcome.
. TRUST ME, the effort and pain (yes i poked myself with the needle many times) IS TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!