Dying-The Bloom Method



I am often asked whilst flying my kites, "Is it painted?" and
when I come to explain that its not and that all the colours are
obtained by dying, I nearly always get the reply - "but I
thought you couldn't dye ripstop". Wwll you can, its quite easy
and as some of my dyed kites are now over ten years old and
still going strong it obviously does little or no damage to the
fabric.



The dye I use is Dylon hot water ( yes HOT) dye, the sort that
you can find in most dress shops and department stores. It comes
in a range of colours and one pot would be enough to dye about 5
metres of ripstop. When choosing your colour you must remember
that the ripstop pobably takes up about 25% of the colour, so if
the tin showa a scarlet you will only get a rosy red. Of course
you can always go for multiple dyeing which deepens the colour.



For the process of dyeing I use a large curry saucepan (now dyed
an interesting colour due to repeated use) and a pair of wooden
tongs. There is no need to prewash the ripstop unlike natural
fibres there will be no colour loss or shrinkage. Make up the
dye solution as per the the instructions on the tin (basically a
coupleof pints of hot water and a couple of teaspoons of salt),
add the ripstop and top up with more hot water. Then gently
simmer the ripstop. it is important not to boil the dye solution
as the ripstop will definately noy like it. You can keep the
ripstop in for as long as you like but after about 15 minutes
there will be no more colour uptake. Rinse the material under
copius amounts of cold water. It is important to make sure that
there is no more dye solution on the surface because if you use
dyed ripstop for a kite AND you kite gets wet AND there is some
dye left on the surface it will run, I know I've done it!.



Hang out to dry and iron on a cool iron and thats all there is
too it. You can experiment with tie dye, batik (yes even this
works, and no the wax doesn't melt the ripstop), multi dyeing
with different colours, using coloured ripstopas the base for
dyeing etc, etc. It really is just a case of experimenting.  One
last thing if you like me have a white acrylic sink keep the dye
well away - it si very difficult to remove! My last kite end up
being rinsed down our well to avoid a blue sink!



GILL BLOOM



Reproduced here with the kind  permission of Gill Bloom.



First Published in THE KITEFLIER July 1995