4 replies to this topic

[Metaria]

So recently I quit my dance class, due to increasing time constraints and decreasing average IQ of the rest of the students. Now I have lots of dance attire (tights, leotards, legwarmers, etc.) lying around my room taking up space.

I was trying to figure out what to do with it all, since I didn't want to throw them away (I spent a lot of money on this crap!) nor was there any aspiring dancer in my neighborhood I could dump them on, when my eyes drifted to the picture of NiGHTS on my desk I use as a drawing model. Hey, NiGHTS is a graceful character, and his costume is very dance-ish (I could totally see him on Broadway,) why not assemble a costume out of dance stuff?

But is it really a good idea? I'd have to dye spandex purple, which may or may not end unfortunately as I've never tried dyeing spandex...also, the shoes might not take a shine to being run around all over cons (especially not the tap shoes.)

I need some advice before going forward on this. I could pretty much assemble JoD NiGHTS' entire costume out of the dance stuff and my closet, except I'd need to do some heavy modification and getting messy with purple and pink dye. And if I do go forward on this, would it do NiGHTS proud?

[Murasaki Doku]

I tried dying a variety of stretchy material when working on my cosplay. After several trials I still did not have a single satisfactory result. It was either the wrong shade, too blotchy, too thin, a mixture of both, and when the material is stretched it changes the color in an optical illusion way. I eventually gave up and bought purple spandex online, and now I have to suffer with a mismatched hat and pants.

Now, I'm not trying to tell you not to make a cosplay...but dying fabrics was just one of the horror stories about my experience.

[animejosse]

From what I've heard it's pretty hard to dye spandex since it's synthetic. Maybe cosplay.com could be of some help?

[Nyx]

NiGHTS costume made from dancewear? A great idea, and I'd love to see it brought to life!

Some advice, though -- Spandex is extremely heat-sensitive and will be damaged by even one minute of boiling for the dyes. The key phrase here is to never, never use hot water on Spandex. One of the options for changing the color of your garments is pigment dyeing, which is actually not dyeing at all, but instead applying fabric paint. I hear that Dharma Pigment dyes are supposed to work on polyester -- maybe they can help.

Some other sites I found that may be able to help a bit:

This person is trying to Dye a Nylon/Spandex unitard.

Cotton/spandex blends are supposed to dye very nicely with cold water fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dyes. More on that here.

And this is a professional who dyes clothes and shoes. She's got some helpful hints on lots of different kinds of materials.

Also, someone tried to make an orange swimsuit with Spandex, and the color started running shortly after it hit the water -- there are 'sealers' that you can use to set the color. Pro-Fix for Nylon from Aljo Dyes is one of the more common ones, although there are other methods which might not be so expensive.

In addition, I found a patent for an invention that claimed to dye spandex with 100% accuracy, but it hasn't been released to market yet...

Anyway, hope this helps, and good luck!

[Metaria]

Wow. I didn't think spandex would be so evil.
I've got some nylon/spandex and cotton/spandex, so I'll try the cold-water dye.

Worse comes to worse, I'll take the black unitard with full-length sleeves and make a Jackle instead.