What is your best recipe for making a Brown fabric dye?

Question

Hey, i've been looking for over a year in a thirty mile radius in all the crafting, arts & sewing supply stores, as well as in mail/online order supply sources, either they don't have it all or they are out of it & don't know when they will get more.

So what is a girl to do? Why mix it up herself from the basic colours.

The problem is what ratios of which colours are needed to make a good brown fabric dye, also which colour would I need to add to get a deeper shade of brown.

Starting from scratch can be expensive & wasteful, which is Why I am asking this question.

**no, coffee doesn't count, because it eventually washes out & wasting good chocolate is no way to get an intentional total brown stain - don't be crazy.

Answer 1

It's hard to mix colours from many dyes because they aren't the true colours. I've mixed dyes and you can get some very strange results. Brown could be made from yellow, red, and black.  That combination is probably your best bet. Start with yellow, add a little red till you get some shade of orange, then add a little black. If it's too warm, try adding a tiny bit of blue but go very easy with that or you could just get mud. It could be made from two complementary colours such as red and green but you'll probably get a very dull muddy brown with that method. Have you checked websites for Rit and Dylon dyes? They're two of the most popular. They both manufacture the stuff, they should have some brown available though Dylon is British-based so might be expensive to order online. There's also Procion.