Name: Caroline

Message: Hi, I have been using vinegar and steam setting to hold shapes in silk and was wondering if there is any way to get rid of the vinegar smell?  Thanks so much!

Soaking in water would remove the smell of vinegar, but unfortunately it would remove your pleats as well.

An easy way to avoid the vinegar smell when dyeing with acid dyes is to use another acid. Perhaps the same approach will work for steam-setting your pleats in silk. 

The purpose of vinegar is to provide a low pH, so, if you want to experiment with this, try substituting ammonium sulfate or citric acid for vinegar. Use pH paper to determine how much to add; in her book, Shibori: Creating Color and Texture on Silk, Karren Brito recommends a pH between 3 and 4 for setting pleats in silk with vinegar. I think you'd use one tablespoon (15 ml) of citric acid or ammonium sulfate in place of eleven tablespoons (165 ml) of 5% white vinegar, since these are equivalent to one another in ProChem's Washfast Acid dye recipes.

I have also read about steaming silk for an extended time (several hours instead of fifteen minutes) to set pleats, without any vinegar at all, so I'm not quite sure how necessary the acid is for this technique.


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