Well Chris and I have been communicating back and forth and hard at work to get a formula down for you guys. I think between the two of us and much grief we may have a good result.
Heres mine below.....
I had tried to dye mine with the wine and dark brown as stated before, so I took a bleach wash to it and the results are below. I just let it sit till it was as light as I thought it was going to get and washed it really well and dried it.
Really pretty huh?? Nice shade of violet..
uke
Then I redyed it with a combination of the RIT cocoa brown and scarlett.
I did the same as Chris, I used a large stainless stock pot I use for dying stuff and make sure there is room for the belts to move other wise the color is uneven.
I filled the pot to within 4 inches of the top about 2 gals or so, brought the water to a rolling boil like when you cook pasta.
I added the cup of salt and 1 tbls. of detergent as stated on the box.
I added a full box of the cocoa brown and 1/2 of the scarlet box, stirred really well to mix. Then add your girth belt and be sure you wet it, don't put it in dry.
I brought back up to a boil and turned it down to a simmer, voila girth belt soup. J/k sounds like a receipe.
I let it simmer for and hour and keep it moving, guys in other words don't leave it sit for an hour, stir it occasionally to keep the color even too.
Oh and one other note
becareful to not stretch it whilst in the hot water, it may have sag on some of the strands in the end, like on mine on the bottom strand at the right.
Be sure what ever you stir it with is either metal so it won't stain or something you can throw away like a wood paint stirrer you can pick up at Home Depot. Be aware anything including your fingers will stain!!! So don't splash the dye.
After my hour was up I took a big glass bowl to move them out of the pot to the sink. Give them a good rinse with HOT water first, so have the hot water running. Gradually turn the temp down to cool as your final rinse this will help set the dye. Just be sure the water runs clear.
Be sure to clean your sink if its white right after you rinse them!! I put them back into the bowl to take outside.
I didn't get much shrinkage, not noticable at least. So I hung mine outside to dry yesterday in the 85 degree heat! Along side my ESbbjumpsuit to try and lighten the dye on it a bit, my neighbors must have thought I was nuts!
So here are the final results;
It is sooooo much better than the results I got with the Dark brown and wine.
Its a great auburn shade, and I am relieved its over.
Thank you Chris for all your input as well, and trying different dye options.
So hopefully with the above results from Chris's and mine you can come to some sort of conclusion as to how to approach the issue.
Any ???? just drop me a pm, and have fun its a messy job and your going to have to do it.
Christi
P.S. Pete yours is the one on the left, hope you like.