I needed to dye a tan zipper black to match a black pair of pants that the zipper slide split on. I cut the zipper out of the pants this weekend. now, to sew the new zipper in.
I had found the zipper in a collection of old zippers I had gotten via FreeCycle. The zipper is made of real metal. Should last longer then the plastic one original to the pants.
I decided to dye my jacket tonight while I was dyeing the zipper. I have had the jacket about 10 years now. It got pretty sun-faded sitting over the car seat in the Florida sun. The shoulders of the jacket are quite yellow now.
Here I have my jacket in a steaming hot bucket of green dye water. 
I used tongs and a glove to move the jacket around. I used the tongs more then my hand, because that water was hot! I wanted to make sure that the jacket was dyed through.
While I was at it, I tossed a few odds and ends in with the dye. I tried some acrylic sheets in the black and green dye. The black dye came out a nice brown color, and the green just tinted the plexi. I also stuck a bit of airline tubing into the black, and that took the color really well. I will need to remember that to get black tubing for a tank in the future. Some bits of plastic took the black as a dark blue. Funny how the acrylic took it as brown, while the plastic took it as blue.
My jacket, natural light before.
Natural light after.
Camera flash before.
Camera flash after.
It looks better to the eye then it does on the camera. Not sure why. But you can see that it’s a little less yellow. If I had spent more then the $6 on 3 colors of dye, and didn’t have the two half-packets left over, I would be frustrated with the results. I think it ruin the jacket – it’s no worse then it was. I took a year or two of age off of it, so that;s good.
Next up is to try to water-proof it. I had wanted to give dyeing a go before I coated it with waterproof spray and prevent the jacket from taking the dye at all.
