What colour to dye a hideous linen scarf?

December 30, 2021 4:12 PM

In a fit of madness on a trip to Vilnius a couple of years ago I bought a truly horrible scarf. It is fine pure linen in alternating squares of mid blue, a vile bright green and bilious light pink, with the dyes bleeding into each other where they meet. I was going to donate it, but it is so ugly it would likely end up in recycling. So maybe it would be fun to keep it and dye it? Initially I thought of black but that seems a bit boring. However I’m not sure if the original colours would show through or affect the result if I chose an actual colour. Any advice or suggestions? I’m in the UK and looking at Dylon hand dye packs, I’ve never dyed anything before.
posted by ElasticParrot to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (18 answers total)

If you're going to experiment, it sounds to me like a short wash of light blue dye would result in something with blue, blue-green and lavender bits. But full disclosure, I find dyeing to be a PITA that the end result almost never justifies, if only because of the laundry / transfer potential afterwards.
posted by fingersandtoes at 4:25 PM on December 30, 2021

I would go with a serious taupe. That should blend pretty well with the existing colors and could give you an interesting-looking, harmonious whole that will, as a bonus, coordinate well with a lot of other things.

If you're feeling saucy, you could try washing this with something that's likely to remove as much of the dye as possible, then try tea-dyeing it (with a very dark, concentrated tea solution)

I would definitely wash it a lot first, possibly with vinegar -- that could mute the original colors and make it easy to dye over.
posted by amtho at 4:53 PM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Agree with amtho, see what happens when you wash it a few times before dying, in warm or even hot water. The colours might bleed all over each other with interesting results. I have dyed things, mostly towels, successfully with Dylon, in the washing machine, and if i remember correctly instructions include washing the fabric first (if the fabric is new it will most likely have been treated with some kind of apreture).
posted by 15L06 at 5:21 PM on December 30, 2021

I've dyed linen before and used a chocolate brown. It still ended up looking a bit blotchy, but a scarf can pull off that texture. I agree washing it a bunch first to get rid of the old dye.
posted by soelo at 8:35 PM on December 30, 2021

Best answer: Just chiming in on the dyeing mechanics - I'm not sure if the Dylon hand dye ones are optimised for cellulose fibre like linen. Is there anything in the Dylon line that's recommended to include cotton as well? Based on what I see of the product info, it seems more suited for protein fibres. I would try the other ranges that's more foolproof (the hand dye ones also advices adding in salt, for mordanting purposes I'm going to guess but also for even application). If possible try looking for reactive (NOT acid) dyes if your store does include other sorts (batik dyes is one term I've heard it sold under).

In general though, make sure your scarf is already wet (not necessarily with an acidic solution eg vinegar -- cellulose interacts best with alkaline mixes buttttt it's an acceptable thing to do for most cases with linen IME and you're not doing this long-term anyway), and yes wash it at least once beforehand. The washing is to remove any at-sale finishing and the wetting is so the dye is absorbed at fairly equal rates across the length of the fabric (as the fibres won't be sucking in the first liquid they encounter).

In terms of colour, this is an interesting puzzle. You're not looking at a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) colour wheel (that's for light waves) but a Cyan-Yellow-Magenta-Black (CYMK) one (for inks) as guidance/inspiration. I'm still not good at applied colour theory on this side of things, but suffice to say you'll have to think of it as layering rather than adjusting a colour value. IMO whichever colour you're adding, brown-to-black is already likely. I think either yellow OR blue is your eventual choice. Yellow may get your greens with splashes of orangey red (the previously pink), while the blue will give you greens with purple splashes. I think. But basically you don't need to go black immediately.

After dyeing, especially if you're winging it on the weight ratio, make sure to wash it at least a couple of times, because the dye overrun is probably inevitable.
posted by cendawanita at 9:12 PM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

I feel like you might be overestimating the tastefulness of all of your neighbours. An interesting experiment might be putting it up for a nominal price (£2..?) on local/facebook classifieds to see if your ugly but well made scarf can find its person?
posted by hotcoroner at 10:14 PM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Can you share a photo?
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:34 PM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Definitely check if anyone wants it as-is before doing anything to it. But possibly giving it a soak in a bleach solution (stirring periodically to encourage even rather than splotchy bleaching) would help to mute the colors before dying? (Possibly even instead of dying, but most likely it would still look bleached rather than intentional, and thus tacky in a different way than its current state). Then of course rinse very well before adding other chemicals that might potentially react poorly with the bleach.
posted by eviemath at 10:54 PM on December 30, 2021

I would dye it blue. Worst case, it's still horrible; best case, it ends up with a pleasing palette of blues, bluegreen and purple. cendawanita's advice sounds perfect and very thorough; I'm not as thorough as that but I've dyed stuff before. I would dye it blue.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:29 AM on December 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Here it is. I really don’t know what possessed me to buy it.

I’m thinking blue is the way to go.
posted by ElasticParrot at 5:48 AM on December 31, 2021

Now that I've seen it, blue certainly does seem like the way to go! Can we see it when it's done?
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:55 AM on December 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh, that’s not nearly as bright or garish as I was expecting from your description! Also not my preferred colors, so I can see why you’re not into it, but someone will definitely want it as-is. But it’s also fine to play around with dying it if you want to, of course.
posted by eviemath at 2:31 PM on December 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Hmmm... maybe you could put some blue or black dye into a spray bottle and just dye the pink parts?
posted by amtho at 11:17 PM on December 31, 2021

Ah that scarf is tricky / interesting because it has all three primary colours.

Nerdy explanation: The primary colours are red, blue, yellow. You can mix any 2 of those and get a secondary colour (purple, green, orange). But if you mix all three of them, you get BROWN.

So your scarf has:
BLUE = primary colour
green = BLUE + YELLOW
peach = RED + YELLOW

If you add blue, you won't harm the blue and green since they already have blue, so you won't be mixing all 3 primary colours in those patches. They'll just turn into deeper-blue and blue-green.

The tricky part is that the pink is sort of peachy, meaning it's a mix of red and yellow. That's already 2 primary colours... so when you add blue, you've now mixed all three primary colours, and that means the peach parts, if dyed blue, will turn brown.

If you dye the scarf blue, you will get a Blue-Turquoise-Brown scarf. That could be great. I'd try using a pale blue that's not much darker than the peach, to take the peach to tan rather than a deep brown. Turquoisey blue is a pretty universally flattering colour and cool brown is great on some people, so it would probably be weaarble.

OR...

You could actually try dying it YELLOW. Weird choice, I know, but it would prevent any mixes of three primary colours (you'd get Blue+Yellow, Blue+Yellow+Yellow, and Red+Yellow+Yellow). Dyeing it yellow would make the green and peach warmer and more yellowy, and turn the blue into green as well. So you'll get a Green-Green-Peach scarf which might actually be quite flattering if you have a soft autumn kind of colouring (think Drew Barrymore, or if you have green eyes or some orange tones in your hair).

How to choose? If you look good in brown and khaki green and other soft warm forest colours, I would say try dyeing it yellow. If you look better in bright blue, cool aqua ocean and blossom colours, I would try dyeing it blue.
And then, if that's not a flattering outcome, you can always dye the whole thing black!

Would love to see pics when it's done!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 11:03 AM on January 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Have ordered medium blue, will give it a go and post results. Thanks everyone.
posted by ElasticParrot at 12:22 PM on January 1, 2022

Good luck with the blue! I would just like to emphasize for dyeing as it's to do with colour pigments, you're not looking at red-green-blue as your primary colours but cyan-magenta-yellow, which is the more appropriate colour wheel to think about when you're handling pigments. The constituent base for pigments in dyes doesn't map cleanly to RGB (which is best for anything on the light spectrum). In any case for this scarf, luckily it's not particularly a big issue since either wheel would indicate blue or yellow as your best bet (but for different technical reasons, which might come in play later if you need to go up or down the tonal quality).
posted by cendawanita at 3:38 PM on January 1, 2022

Re-reading my comment, I see I made a critical mistake: I talked about RGB, when I wanted to respond to 'red, yellow, and blue are primary colours'. My apologies. The rest of my comment still stands however - cyan, magenta, and yellow are primary colours for pigments. RBY is often taught, I know, but not actually practiced.
posted by cendawanita at 3:49 PM on January 1, 2022

Response by poster: So here is the scarf after dying. I probably made a series of rookie errors, it’s a bit darker than I was aiming for but it came out very well overall. I can’t see much of a demarcation where the pink was but the flashes of green give it a kind of oil-on-water effect that I like. I had to take it off my neck for the photo so I call that a success.

Thanks again to everyone for advice that motivated and encouraged me to save the poor unfortunate scarf!
posted by ElasticParrot at 5:28 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]