Day Thirteen: Custom Dying Leather Labels

I was reminded by the interns that we actually do a third type of fabric/leather finish which is dying. Today we are going to show you taking our standard natural leather labels and dying/finishing them for a client who wanted a particular color with a waterproof finish. Our printer is running a last minute job for a client today so you can see the printed fabric belt hopefully tomorrow.

Ella, our new intern is in the photos. Dye can be applied in a number of ways: painted or vat/dipped dyes are the two of our most popular. You can also do other ones such as stamped, screen-printed, rolled, etc. Pictured here is leather dye which is hand-painted on and then allowed to dry for 7-72 hours before it has a top finish applied. You generally see the final color roughly a week after you first dye them so I like to give them time to stabilize. We have 150 custom colors and can generally match a specific Pantone color within 4 shades if you need it. This is a popular request for limited edition pieces or items that are unique.

There are 2 important things to remember when dealing with dying. One, each piece if hand-painted will be unique and vary slightly from the others. And two, vat dyes are different each lot. This is true even with the big fabric houses so if you are ordering fabric or leather, it pays to either be able to order all of one fabric at a time or from the same lot. Have a great day. We look forward to having you check back tomorrow.