Name: Marg

Message: I want to make a rainbow swirl tie dye with black "stripes" streaming out from the center.  How do I get the stripes?

The usual method for adding the black stripes is, after applying the colored fiber reactive dye in the spiral design, to dip the still-tied disk of fabric into a pan that has a very shallow layer of black fiber reactive dye. Alternatively, you can apply the black dye to just the surface of one side of the dyed fabric bundle, using a foam brush. It's a little hard for most people to picture how well this works, until they've tried it.

Note that black dye needs to be mixed at a higher concentration than most dye colors. Use at least twice as much dye powder when mixing your black dye as you do for your other colors.

The picture of the Nebula Spiral tie-dyed t-shirt to the right is from the True Tie Dye DVD, Tie Dye 101, which explains how to make this and many other basic tie-dye designs.

I'm assuming that you are using a good fiber reactive dye for this, such as Procion MX dye.The black stripe technique is not going to work well if you are using an all-purpose dye, such as Rit® or Tintex® brand dyes. Here's a link to a page on how to tie-dye with all-purpose dye. To add the black stripe on after that laborious (and somewhat dangerous, with respect to scalding) process would require brushing the dye on as above, but then wrapping the fabric, still very wet with dye, in plastic wrap, and steaming it for half an hour, as you might steam vegetables, to set the black dye, followed by rinsing and then the use of a cationic dye fixative such as Retayne to set the dye more permanently. The technique for doing this with fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX dyes is so much simpler and easier!

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