Name: carol

Message: Hello.  I am constructing costumes for a dance piece.  30 dancers in white cotton leggins and shirts.  I need to dye them to look like a "jackson pollack" print.  In other words a "splattered" look.  Not tie dyed.  Deep rich colors (10 in a group) one group will be blues and purples - another group of 10 will be oranges yellows and reds and the final group of 10 greens.  Obviously I need to be able to wash these costumes frequently - dancers sweat lots - - .  Can you help me? thanks a lot.....

It is possible to use tie-dye dyes with a spatter technique to get the effect you want. You'd use a bit of sodium alginate to thicken the dyes, so that they would not spread as much. To use the soda ash needed to set the dye, without having the garments wet so that the dye spreads quickly on contact, you can either add the soda ash directly to the dye immediately before applying it, or you can soak the cotton (or cotton/spandex) in soda ash, as for tie-dyeing, and then line-dry it with the soda ash in the fabric, ready to react with the dye.

The advantage of using Procion MX fiber reactive dyes, which are the type found in all good tie-dye kits, is that they will react with cotton permanently. This will produce the most washfast results possible. Other types of dye, such as Rit dye, require very hot or boiling water to set, and will fade far more quickly, and run in the laundry. If you order your Procion MX dyes in jars of two ounces or more per color, from a good dye supplier such as Grateful Dyes in Colorado, PRO Chemical & Dye in Massachusetts, or Dharma Trading Company or Jacquard Products in California, they will cost a fraction as much as the dyes you can buy in stores, and you will have a wide range of dye colors to choose from. (See Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World.)

Be sure to also get soda ash, sodium alginate or print paste mix, water softener, and (optionally) urea. Except for spattering the dye on, instead of tying the fabric and then squirting the dye on to saturate, you can use the exact same recipe as is used for tie-dyeing. See Michael Fowler's recipe on my sodium alginate page. To learn about the other chemicals I mentioned, see the "Dye Auxiliaries" section of my dyeing FAQ. For the dye application, you will want to experiment a little to see what gives the best results. You might spatter the dye by dipping a brush into the dye and stroking a stick across the bristles, or use a cheap spray bottle for a finer mist of color (the nozzles of many cheap spray bottles are adjustable for droplet size) — be sure to use breathing protection if you spray dyes, or you may use an eyedropper or pipette to apply spots of dye.

Alternatively, you can use fabric paint to spatter or spray your costumes. Fabric paint may be easier for some novices to use in that you don't have to make sure the paint reacts with the fabric, as dye needs to. After spraying, allow the fabric to dry, then heat-set as recommended by the manufacturer. The simplest way to heat-set fabric paint is to use a commercial dryer, for half an hour or longer, to heat the dry clothes. (Home dryers do not get hot enough.) Dry heat does not work to set dyes, but is ideal for setting fabric paint. However, fabric paint is not as durable on clothing as dye is. It tends to wear off from use and from washing. Costumes colored with fabric paint should be turned inside-out for washing, and washed on a delicate cycle, or hand-washed, in order to delay the wearing off of the fabric paint from the fabric.

If you were using synthetic fibers such as polyester for your costumes, I'd recommend the use of fabric paint, but since you are using cotton, Procion dye will probably be the best choice. Cotton is one of the easiest of fibers to dye well, when you use the right type of dye.

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