It is better to dye small amounts at first, and try to gauge how much material of a certain type or colour you will use in the course of the next few months or years. I remember a pupil from one of my classes coming in with a whole Icelandic sheepskin which he had dyed a lovely bright shade of hot orange. I have no idea where he got a suitable chip pan! He was very proud of it, as it was one of his first attempts, and the whole class was very impressed, I remember how crestfallen he was when I asked him during the coffee break what he was going to use it for, he had become so fascinated and carried away with the successful dyeing that he had somehow lost touch with the purpose of it.

Remember, you can dye half capes or even a few dozen selected feathers if you wish, or small patches of fur, it is not necessary to dye whole animals, even if your chip pan is big enough! Sounds like yet another minus point for elephants! The following fur and hair was also dyed using these methods;



I have tried on quite a number of occasions to bleach various materials using various methods, but have now ceased experimenting in this direction as the results were all fairly lousy, or too much of a clart on, and I don't like to ruin good material. I will leave this to the commercial suppliers in future. There is some literature available on bleaching, if you want to try it. However, I simply found it too much of a mess about, and with very uncertain results. My best results were obtained by using some hairdressing products, but these are not cheap, and still quite "iffy", depending on how you use them. Most methods I tried damaged the materials to such an extent that they were barely usable.

My best "Fiery brown" dye is however a ladies hair dye. There is no other that even comes close to it. I have forgotten the name of the product for the moment. I will look it up and post it to the board if anybody is interested.

Be careful when you find apparently cheap sources of ready dyed feathers and furs. It is by no means certain that these will be colour fast, one of my pupils came to a class with a large quantity of feathers in all the colours of the rainbow, which he had bought very cheaply at a shop which was selling "Genuine Red Indian" headdresses for children. These feathers looked great, but the dye was not fast, and actually came off on your fingers when tying. Soaking the feathers for a while in water reduced the colour to almost zero! Not much use for fly dressing.

You can test this quite simply usually, spit on your thumb and forefinger, and rub the material. If the colour comes off on your fingers, leave it.

There are numerous methods of dyeing, and types of dye. In America, some people use things like soft drink powders ???kool aid" and the like. The consumers of such must have cast iron stomachs!, and there are dyes like "Rit", "Dylon" and many others. For quite a while I experimented with various plant extracts, and a host of other things, and it was a lot of fun. Of course, I have not tried them all. Some may work, many will not, or not reliably. If you want consistent results, and purely as a means of making your materials more useful and valuable, then I would personally advise you sticking to Veniards dyes.

One last little trick here, which may be of use to you even if you don??t want to dye your own materials. If you buy material, and the dye comes off when you spit on your finger and rub it, then it is useless for fly-dressing in that condition. Of course you could send it back to the supplier, if that is possible, but if you are obliged or want to keep it, and like the colour, then drop it into a pan of not quite boiling water with three tablespoons of vinegar per litre added. This will "fix" most dyes. ? Afterwards simply rinse it and dry it as described above!

Mallard and similar water bird feathers are also quite straightforward as long as you degrease them thoroughly. I would recommend you remove the "fluff" from the base of the feathers as it is useless, and merely soaks up a lot of dye. To degrease water bird feathers, which are covered in preen oil, wash in hand hot water with a generous dash of Fairy liquid. Agitate the feathers a few times, and let them soak for a while. ten minutes will normally suffice. Rinse thoroughly.

Immediately before dyeing place the feathers in very hot ( but not boiling!) water. ( this is only done to get the feathers up to temperature. Otherwise they will cool the bath too much). Then transfer to the dye bath. The dye bath should be just below boiling point. The dye should take almost immediately.

It is IMPERATIVE!!!!!!! that all the material you wish to dye be placed in the bath simultaneously. You CAN NOT dye things the same colour one after another. Each piece of material you dye exhausts the bath to some extent. If you try to dye things "one after another" in the same bath, the dye shade becomes progressively lighter with each piece of material you dye.

There are formulas for calculating the amount of dye required for a specific dry weight of material to be dyed, but you don??t really need them for dyeing a few feathers. It is also essential that the feathers do not touch the sides of the dye vessel! This will cause them to curl or burn! That is why you need a steel colander or sieve. There are very many misconceptions about dyeing. Material which is dyed, actually takes on the dye itself, which when properly done, chemically bonds to the material, also making it colour fast. The liquid in which the dye and the material is placed, is merely a transport medium to ensure even dyeing.

If you have the right amount of dye in the bath for the amount of material you are dyeing, then the bath will clear almost completely, and look like clear water. Dye is not like ink or paint. If you put too much material in the bath, then you will get a lighter shade, because the dye is distributed evenly among the material in the bath. Using more dye of a particular colour, for material of a certain dry weight, will not give you a darker shade! Using less dye than would normally be required will however give you a lighter shade. I know people continually write to the contrary, but that is simply because they do not understand the process.

If you have a crimson dye, and you use the right amount of that dye to dye a white cape. Then you will get a crimson cape. Regardless of how much dye you add, the cape will still be crimson. The extra dye you added is merely wasted . If you use the same crimson dye, and use only half the amount which would normally be required to dye a white cape crimson, then it will turn out a different shade. Usually a lighter shade of red, but also maybe even pink or light orange. The dye used is related to the dry weight of the material you wish to dye, and is independent of the water in the dye bath. The dye actually leaves the water, and bonds to the material. If the dye bath is still bright crimson after you have finished dyeing something, then either the dye has not "taken" properly, or you have used far too much dye.


Dyeing is a vast and extremely complex subject. Such knowledge is not essential for dyeing up most fly-dressing materials, but it can be useful, especially for special cases. Some special natural dyes are still used for dyeing some materials, as the shade depth and lustre is unmatched for some purposes. However, this is best left to professionals in most cases.

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