I just wanted to give a quick PSA which is if you need to dye fabric, and ESPECIALLY if you need to do a gradient dye, please save yourself and use a natural fiber. Trust me, you'll thank yourself later. 

I bring this up because of the increasing popularity of ombré as a design element for cosplay, for example in the designs of popular fan artist Hannah Alexander and nearly every single Overwatch character. 

You may have heard that you can dye synthetic fabric as long as you use dye for synthetics. This isn't entirely true-- at most you can STAIN the fabric, and if that, it's very difficult and time consuming, and you'll often have issues with the color not coming out as dark or as bright as you like. This ESPECIALLY becomes an issue if you're trying to do a gradient, because synthetic dye needs to be kept at a certain temperature for a very long time, and the only way to get a smooth gradient is to constantly raise and lower your fabric into the dye pot. Most people therefore simply cannot gradient dye a synthetic fabric, and if you're very skilled, you can do it, but it will take much longer-- possibly hours-- and your arms will be killing you!

Natural fiber dye is, by nature, much easier to use. 

And now for the mind blowing part: natural fiber fabrics don't even have to be more expensive!

Cotton is a great option for some projects and it's very cheap, and comes in stretch fabrics. Rayon or rayon blends also work great too!

If you need something shiny or drapey, you can use silk! When you say silk it automatically sounds expensive, but you can actually get silk pretty cheaply online. One of my favorite places to get silk is Dharma Trading. You can see in the screenshots below it's often even cheaper than a comparable synthetic fabric!

Sometimes you just can't find the thing you need in a natural fiber and you have to use a synthetic. Keep the following in mind if you need to dye a synthetic fabric:

- You CANNOT dye acetate. Sorry :( It's a bummer for everyone but it just does not take dye. Check the fiber content of your fabric before you buy--make sure its something like rayon, nylon, polyester, acrylic, spandex, etc-- all of these will work! 

- You will need a special dye for synthetics such as Rit Dyemore or iDye Poly. You can get both of these at Joanns. (ProTip: you can actually use regular natural dye for nylon or rayon as these mimic natural fibers)

- As previously mentioned, doing an ombre dye on synthetic fabric is very difficult, though not totally impossible. 

-Dyeing a solid color on synthetic isn't so bad if you are patient. If you have dyed a natural fiber fabric before, you may expect it to take the color immediately. Synthetic doesn't work that way - the entire piece of fabric has to get to a certain temperature before it starts to take the color.

Check out this link for a written and video tutorial using Rit Dyemore and the stove top method: