I’ve seen thousands of yards of hand-dyed material with multiple runs to create blends and unique colorations – all in the space of a standard IRL workbench. There is no reason why we need to have an aircraft carrier Dyer’s Bench made of later-game mats.
To be “realistic,” it seems like dyeing should only occur in Conan on a Bench. However, personally, the old system was great and something I looked forward to with every new character. Changing scrounged rags into something neato on the fly.