I haven't dyed silk chiffon before but I'll soon be dyeing silk charmeuse, which is kind of like an opaque step-up from chiffon, but still really light and fluid. I'll let you know how it goes. Natural fibres are apparently very easy to dye, as opposed to synthetics, so it should be fairly good results I think.

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I'm debating if I should start with a natural/white silk chiffon and dye it from there, or with a purple silk chiffon from online, and try to adjust it to match the dupioni.

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Hello!

Start with white. You have far more control over the end product.

You can get specialist silk dyes in loads of colours - probably mail order. Marabu, Dupont and Javana are good.

Get more fabric than you need. Do a test piece.

If you want to dye it in the washing machine, use Dylon. This is probably the best bet if you haven't done it before, rather than mucking about with silk dyes (which will REALLY stain your fingers!!!). I don't know what their colour range is like though, but I think it's pretty big.

Trying to adjust fabric is really difficult. However, if you want to buy ready-made you should be able to get them to send you a swatch of the colour to see how close it is to what you want.

The test swatch is REALLY important as that way you can see how the colour looks against the Dupion fabric I presume you're putting underneath it?

If you want help, comment my journal and we'll discuss. I've been painting on silk for at least 10 years, so may be able to offer you some advice.

(saw you on the weddingplans comm)

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Thank you! I suspect I'm going to chicken out on the silk chiffon and just do the sleeves from the silk dupioni. The color matching just intimidates me ;) This would be sleeves on a dress in dupioni, and they'd have nothing underneath them, so they'd have to match the dupioni basically exactly. I don't think I'm ready for that!

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dyeing to match especially for a noob dyer is hard.

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Ok...so....any tips?

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