I washed a garment in shower cream and the dye started to come out a whole lot. What should I do for a mordant effect? If I use salt, do I have to boil the garment? Someone told me to use vinegar. What is best, and why - please explain? I'm so afraid that all the color brightness will be ruined if more dye keeps coming out each time I hand wash it.

Looks like you have a garment that was dyed with a bad dye. Do not try mordanting the dye with salt or vinegar. First, because neither salt nor vinegar works as a mordant, and second, because it's way too late to use a mordant now anyway.

The shower gel most likely contained an ordinary detergent such as sodium lauryl sulfate, with mild acids similar to vinegar added to make it pH-neutral. If pH is involved in any way in your problems, than the answer is to increase the pH with washing soda or soda ash, not decrease it with vinegar.

You can buy a commercial dye fixative which is at least a hundred times more effective than salt or vinegar. It's called Retayne. Sometimes you can find it in a good quilting supply store or fabric store; if not, you will have to mail order it from any good dye supplier. Rit has recently introduced their own brand of this product, called Rit Dye Fixative; if you can find this product, use it.

If you can't find Retayne, then what you're going to have to do is wash the garment repeatedly, in the washing machine or by hand, with laundry detergent, in the hottest water the garment can stand, until all of the poorly attached dye is done coming out. This is a step that should have been performed by the manufacturer of the garment!

Then, if the brightness is gone, use a good dye to rejuvenate the color, unless it is made of undyeable synthetics. Your choice of dye depends completely on the fiber content of the garment. If it is cotton or rayon (viscose), use fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, Tulip One Step Fashion Dye, Dylon Permanent Dye, or Dylon Machine Dye. Avoid all-purpose dyes such as Rit or Tintex unless you are dyeing a blend of cotton or rayon with nylon or wool.

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