My diligent thrift shopping has done it again! This evening I went down to my favourite Goodwill and found a pair of L. L. Bean chinos with the double pocket flaps for a mere $3.50. The waist size is right, it has pleats, and the length is almost perfect. (They're a smidge long.) The only real issue is that they're off white in colour.
What I want to do is dye the trousers to a darker Raiders colour. Does anybody have a good suggestion as to what colour dye I should get? I know Rit dye is a good brand, but I don't know which colour dye will translate well. (I'm open to brand suggestions as long as it's not a poor quality dye.)
At any rate, add it up with my vintage one dollar Indy shirt and my four dollar Beaver Blend Twenty hat (soon to be completely reblocked by Fedora) and it's a whopping $7.50! Maybe I should write a book and call it "Look Like Indiana Jones for 10 Dollars or Less: The Guide to the Thrift Store Indy."
I've dyed a few pairs with Rit. I recommend you get brown, red, and black. First I dyed them with the brown to get them about the right shade of color you want. Then after rinsing them out I dyed them in the red for a few seconds to get the "officer pinks" look, which will give you a slightly pinkish brown color. Then I dyed them in the black for a sec to mute out the brightness of the pink and add a grey to the color. Give that a try, but remember that they'll look much darker than they're gonna be while they are wet.
Okay, so if I go the tripple-dye route, what shades of brown and red should I get, or does Rit dye come in only one brown and red? And can you give me a brief tutorial on how you did this? Sure, I only paid a couple of bucks for the pants, but I don't think I'll stumble upon another pair like this for a good while.
I wish there was more of a tutorial but that's really all there is to it. 90% of it is just doing it by eye for the color and shade you want. The first pair I did came out more of a Last crusade color, so on the second pair I added a longer time in the black and less time in the red, for a greyer tone to the color. As for the dye colors I believe they only come in one shade but the brown was "Dark Brown", the red was "Scarlet"and then just Black. Remember if it starts looking too dark stop and let them dry to see what the real color will be. It usually will be 5 to 10 shades lighter. In the very unlikely case you get it wrong and they are too dark, soak them in some bleach for a bit to lighten them up and if the color is really screwed up just buy some of the color remover by Rit and start over. It's actually very easy, compair it to bashing a fedora for the first time. You think it's gonna end up horrible but it doesn't turn out bad at all.
I had a pair of off white Dockers that had a run in with a mud puddle and was never able to get the stains out. I decided the best course of action was to match the stains by dying them!
I ran them first with Brown Rit. This gave them a medium-ish brown color with some hints of reddish/orange. I them ran them thru a watered down black dye bath. This mutted the overall color. I felt the pants had too much red tint to them. This came out pretty good. I later received a swatch of NH pants material and in side by side, they were pretty close. Not perfect, but better then what I've seen stock at most generic stores.
You can always remove the dye and start over. Or overdye back and forth a few times until you get something you like.
