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[quote=Anonymous]I dye fabrics all the time, mostly silks.

Silks are challenging to dye for an amateur and easy to ruin if you don't know what you are doing.  You can destroy the fabric finish, particularly with heavier silks and richer silks, such as silk satins, distort the fibers, and shrink the fibers.  Lighter silks like chiffon and charmeuse are easier to dye and take dye beautifully, but require knowledge of how to properly dry and set the dyes or you will end up with a puckered, wrinkly, shrunken mess.

The natural color of silk is a candlelight off white, so you just need to search a little to get silk that is in the cream family.  Silk almost never comes in true white, and when it does it is quite expensive because it takes so much effort to make silk pure white.  If the silk clothing you are buying is pure white, then it is likely not silk but a silk blend or entirely synthetic and mislabeled (especially if the pure white "silk" is inexpensive)

If it is pure white silk blend, it won't dye easily, if at all.  For synthetic fabrics to take dye, the water must be VERY hot, dye fixatives must be added, and the fabric must be properly rinsed then steamed.  It is a PROCESS to dye synthetic fabrics.  Synthetic fabrics take dye in very different ways using very temperatures and dye concentration than silk, which actually takes dye easily, with the difficulty in the drying and finishing.   Dyeing a silk blend is difficult and not at all recommended.

Dyeing silk should be done at the fabric stage before the garment is sewn.  Silk, especially lightweight silks, will shrink on the bias when dyed due to the water temperature and agitation, so it needs to be dyed before cutting so the fabric grain is straight and the bias is not twisted.  Dyeing a finished silk garment is very risky as you are likely to end up with a ruined piece of clothing that cannot be worn by anyone.

If you want silk clothing, look for 100% silk which will not be pure white unless it is a VERY expensive piece of clothing like a suit or bridal gown, in which case you don't want to dye it period.

100% silk will be silk colored (yes, "silk" is a real color, a soft candlelight off-white)  100% silk will NOT be pure white.  Pure white "silk" is a synthetic blend.

Cotton clothing can be dyed, but only if you have already washed it and shrunk it in a hot dryer.  If you have to wash it in cold water and air dry to keep it in your size, you cannot dye it because dying requires very hot, scalding water, which will shrink 100% cotton fabric.  Cotton must be preshrunk before dying or you will ruin the fit.[/quote]

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