Name: Lily

Message: This question relates to batik. Hope you can please help me.

I've been making some batiks and encountered problems with dye colour vibrancy. Basically, the dyes are nice and strong when I first apply them... but they all seem to go incipit and lose their richness once I rinse the cloth down. Everything works out fine until this rinseout. After the dye has been applied, then dried (with the wax covering) I set the piece aside overnight to react, and then next day, I ironed out the wax with clean paper. Most of the wax came off fine, but there was a little residue which I still needed to get rid of. So, I rinsed the fabric under hot water, but I noticed that too much dye came off too. I used synthrapol (1/2 teaspoon per 1 litre of water) in the washout process, according to the label. So I'm rinsing it down and quite a bit of dye washes away too, which I don't want. This leaves the whole piece clear of wax but with paler colours that have lost their original strength when I first applied them.

Just to note, I believe I have followed the other steps correctly in making batik: I add 1 teaspoon of soda ash, 1 teaspoon dye powder (or required amount) to a yoghurt-pot container, add lukewarm water halfway then stir. I do this for each of the colours. The fabric I use is plain, pre-washed white cotton sheet, not too thick. And the colours are perfectly opaque and rich until I wash the fabric out.

Would you say that I should avoid the rinseout altogether, and just tolerate that slight waxy residue? Maybe I'm not leaving the dye to react long enough? You're the expert, I'll leave it to you.

I absolutely do not advise you to skip proper washing-out. There is a solution to your problem of washed-out colors; we just have to find it.

First, how long after you add the soda ash to the dye do you complete using it? Dye begins to react with water as soon as soda ash is added. An hour after the soda ash is added, the dye solution is too weak to rely on. Maybe half an hour. If the dye is mixed in very hot water with soda ash, it will be dead in a minute. I use water that is no higher than 75°F (24°C) for mixing the dye with the soda ash, unless the fabric is already in the dye. (If the fabric is already soaked with the dye before you add soda ash, any temperature is fine, because at that point the dye is in the fabric.)

If you paint dye onto a soda-soaked cloth, as some dye artists prefer to, enough soda ash will be picked up by the paintbrush to inactivate the bottle of dye it's being dipped in. In that case, it's best to mix up a good-sized bottle of dye, then pour out just enough to use in half an hour, and replenish the palette of colors as needed.

The most common problem is inadequate dye reaction temperature. Once the dye is on the fabric in the presence of soda ash, it should be kept warm enough for the dye to react. The minimum temperature for Procion MX dyes is 21°C (70°F), if the dye is kept moist enough to react overnight. (Moisture can be retained by adding urea to the dye mix; a good amount to use is 15 ml of urea per 250 ml of dye solution. Alternatively, you can wrap the fabric in plastic wrap to keep it moist overnight.) Drimarene K dyes require a somewhat higher temperature. If the reaction temperature is warmer, it does not take as long. If temperature is your problem, you will probably notice that turquoise MX-G is affected the worst, as it requires more warmth to react. If your room is 21°C, then 24 hours would be a good amount of time to leave the dye to react. If you are dyeing in a bucket, the timing and recipe are different; in that case, if you are using the right amount of dye and salt (a lot of salt if you are using a lot of water!), an hour should be sufficient, if the water is warm enough; warmer water may help. Pick a good recipe and follow it closely, for whatever technique you are using.

Inadequate dye concentration is another real possibility. What happens if you use twice as much dye powder? A typical recipe, for dye painting, calls for 4 teaspoons (20 ml) of dye per cup (250 ml) of water or print paste. For directly squirting the dye on while using the tie-dye recipe, I like to use about that strength. Your fabric should not be the right color when you put the dye on. It should look much darker than you want! Not all of the dye will react with the fabric. At least half will react with the water, instead, so you have to allow for this loss by starting with darker or brighter colors. This may be the key to your problem.

Perhaps the most likely cause of your problem is hard water. You need to buy a phosphate-containing water softener, called sodium hexametaphosphate, and add it to your dye mixtures, if your water is hard. Otherwise, your dye will not reach its full brightness due to interference by calcium and/or magnesium salts in the water. If your water is very hard, you should add this substance to your water for at least the first wash-out, too, because the dye can form difficult-to-wash-out complexes with calcium ions, making it impossible to wash out the excess unattached dye reasonably quickly.

When you do your washout, to remove excess dye, start by rinsing in cool water, to remove the soda ash and any other auxiliary chemicals. Only after the first rinse should you use hot water. At that point, the hotter your water, the better, for washout. Properly attached fiber reactive dye will not wash out even in boiling water, once you've removed the soda ash. (Remazol dyes may wash out in hot water partially, if the soda ash is not removed first with cool water; this should not be a problem with Procion dyes, but with them the initial cool water rinse helps prevent washing-out problems caused by the substantivity of the dye.)

The way I like to remove wax is by adding a small amount of real soap, not detergent, to the water, completely submerging the fabric or garment with two or more gallons of water in a very large stainless steel pot, and then heating until all the wax floats to the top. None of the fabric should be touching the surface when you leave it to cool. When the water has cooled enough, the wax on top will solidify and can be lifted off without getting back into the fabric. Only then do I remove the fabric from the pot. If you remove the fabric from the water while the wax is still liquid, some of the wax goes right back into the fabric as you lift it through.If you have a large enough pot, this method is much easier than ironing, and it may also be kinder to your lungs, since hot paraffin can produce damaging fumes.

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