How to find out if your fabric is made with nylon?
So I received a communion dress from a friend so that I can dye it into another color but I found out that the dye cannot dye any fabric that is with nylon. My friend and I do not know if the fabric consist out of nylon or not, because it looks and feels like cotton but my mom said it’s not really cotton so I have no idea.
So how can we find out(at home) if the fabric is mixed with nylon or not?
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8 Answers
Take a tiny snip and light it. If it flares it is nylon, if it smolders it is cotton.
The other thing is to take a tiny snip and try to dye it. If it works, then the fabric is not nylon.
If this is a commercially made dress then there should also be a tag in it that gives the fabric contents.
Umm, pardon me if I sound dumb, but isn’t there a tag on the dress that might give you some insight? c’mon you all know several other people are reading this Q and thinking the exact same thing! :D
oops, gotta start wearing my glasses…sorry Darwin!
@joni1977, @Darwin, exactly, it’s no commercial dress it’s specially made so no tag.
I have to deal with fabric identification pretty frequently with my vintage clothing stock since fabric content labels weren’t required by law until the 1970s. Cotton and nylon are easy to distinguish from each other with a burn test. Snip a small sliver of fabric from a seam, hold on end with tweezers and light the other end.
First observation: does it keep burning on its own until you blow it out or does the flame self extinguish? Cotton, rayon, linen, acetate and acrylic will keep burning. Nylon, wool, silk and polyester will go out before they burn up. Cotton chars, forms a soft gray ash and smells like burning paper. Nylon melts and forms a hard bead.
You can actually dye nylon if you have the right dye. Unfortunately, it’s not readily available in most places. Aljo sells acetate/nylon dye online, or at their NY location. ( http://www.aljodye.com/main.html )
You might try your luck with Rit or Tintex which are universal dyes and work to varying degrees on multiple fibers (widely available at many supermarkets or drugstores in the laundry aisle). Just be sure to dissolve a lot of salt in the dyebath first as a developer. It may not get as dark as you hope depending on the blend of fibers and what shade you’re aiming for. Also, any trims may be made of something else entirely and probably won’t take the same way. Likewise the thread it’s sewn with (if say for instance, it’s polyester thread). Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
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