How can I get the same dye effect as your Watercolor Rainbow drip-dyeing shirt?

Name: Laura

Country or region: England

Message: Hi, can you please advise me how I would go about getting the same dye effect as you have created on the t-shirt your son is wearing, the picture is called Watercolor Rainbow drip-dyeing. The colours are beautiful and I want to create this effect on a pair of trousers I have.

I dyed that shirt sixteen years ago, but, fortunately, I still remember what dyes I used. That's on the page "Watercolor Rainbow drip-dyeing".

All of the dyes were Procion MX type fiber reactive dye. You can buy this dye from several different mail-order companies in England, such as Fibrecrafts or Kemtex Educational Supplies. (See the 'Europe' section of my "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World" page.)

I mixed up fuchsia (red MX-8B, or Colour Index reactive red 11), lemon yellow (yellow MX-8G, or reactive yellow 86), and cerulean blue (blue MX-G, or reactive blue 163), by placing approximately four teaspoons of dye powder (20 ml) in one cup of urea water (240 mls). In the similar shirt, "Drip dyeing: toddler's swirl tee", I did the same except for substituting turquoise (turquoise MX-G, or reactive blue 140) for the cerulean blue.

The urea water contained one-quarter to one-half cup (60 to 118 ml) of dry urea per quart  (liter) of water. 

(Use distilled or softened water, or add the powdered water softener whose chemical name is sodium hexametaphosphate, if your water is at all hard, as is common in England. Avoid the use of liquid water softeners. See "Dyeing with hard water: water softeners, distilled water, and spring water".) 

I placed each color in a squeezable plastic squirt bottle with a pointed "yorker" tip, such as are sold in tie-dye kits and from any good dye supplier. I probably also mixed a green by taking equal parts of the blue mixture and the yellow mixture and placing them in another plastic squirt bottle, and I know that I mixed a purple by taking equal parts of the fuchsia and blue dye mixtures and placing them in yet another plastic squirt bottle.

Using a large plastic bucket, I dissolved 1 cup (240 ml) of sodium carbonate (a.k.a. soda ash) in 2.5 US gallons (10 liters) of water, water that was warm (body temperature), not hot, as this is the temperature in which soda ash dissolves most easily. Soda ash is a high-pH chemical used to activate the cotton in the fabric so that it will react with the fiber reactive dye. See "What is soda ash, and what's it for in dyeing?".

I took a 100% cotton child's t-shirt, which was free of surface finishes such as stain-resistance or permanent press, and prewashed it in hot water, and soaked it in the bucket of soda ash for fifteen minutes or so. (Note that your trousers will dye equally well only if they are 100% cotton, or nearly so, with no polyester, and not treated to be stain- or wrinkle-resistant.) Wearing waterproof gloves, I removed the shirt from the soda ash solution and squeezed out some of the excess water. I then laid the shirt flat on a gridded surface, made of what the hardware store calls hardware cloth, a stiff wire mesh with square holes that are 1/4 inch (0.6 cm) on each side. Holes of this size work better than the much smaller holes of winder screen, which tend to collect puddles of muddy-colored dye. Some people use the plastic grid from a refrigerator shelf or the diffuser of an office ceiling fluorescent light; other use layers of paper towels, or simply lay the fabric out on the grass, though we should note that soda ash is not good for plants.

Instead of tying the shirt, as in tie-dyeing, I simply laid the shirt out flat and squirted the dyes where I wanted them, in a pattern of diagonal stripes, making sure to place the colors in rainbow order. I did not tie because I did not want any white to remain on the shirt at all, after dyeing.

The interesting pattern on the shirt, between the red and the yellow, was caused by using red MX-8B, a dye widely known as fuchsia (though different suppliers apply their own common names to the different dyes, so it's wise to check on the MX code or the Colour Index number when ordering). Fuchsia is the quickest-to-react of all of the Procion MX type dyes. As soon as it hits the soda-soaked cotton, it reacts where it is, and does not creep along on the fabric much, unlike the other colors. This means that both the red and the purple show a more complex pattern than the green or the yellow do. When this effect is not desired, it can easily be avoided by substituting red MX-5B (reactive red 2), which does not react so quickly, for the red MX-8B. However, in this case the additional detail adds more interest to the design. The pattern of the grid I laid the shirt on also left its mark in the fine detail of the dyes on the shirt.

After you have applied your dyes, keep the garment in a warm place, at least 21°C (70°F), overnight. Be sure to keep the dye on the fabric moist (the urea will do this for you, by retaining some of the water; if you don't use urea, be sure to wrap the garment in plastic, to keep it damp). Finally, wash out the excess unattached dye sometime the next day. Start by rinsing in cool water, to remove all of the auxiliary chemicals such as soda ash, and some of the excess dye, then wash twice in very hot water, preferably 60°C or above (140°F). 

When applied this way, the fiber reactive dye will be highly resistant to washing out, unlike, for example all-purpose dye. It will stay bright for years, even if you wash it in boiling water, as long as you avoid using chlorine-based bleaches.

Posted: Wednesday - August 11, 2010 at 10:10 AM          

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