Name: Gayle

Country or region: Lusby, Maryland, USA

Message: Being novices, we forgot to add the salt to our Tulip tie dye mixture.  We tie dyed some t shirts and napkins.  Is there anything we can do to rectify the situation like rinse the items in salt water, or vinegar and water?  We're not sure what the purpose of the salt is (to help set the colors)?  Any assistance would be much appreciated.  Thank you for your time, Gayle

What made you think that you need to add salt to your tie-dyeing kit? Did the box instructions say to do so?

Although salt is important in dyeing solid colors in a large volume of water, it is really not needed in dyeing with very small amounts of water, such as in tie-dyeing. Salt does not set the dye used in tie-dyeing. I never use salt in tie-dyeing, myself.

Vinegar is not at all useful in setting tie-dyeing dyes, and in fact can actually prevent tie-dyeing dyes from attaching to your fabric. The only dye that requires an acid, such as vinegar, is acid dye, which is never used on cotton.

Which tie-dyeing dyes or kit were you using, exactly? Here's a link to the instructions for "How to use the Tulip® One-Step Tie-Dye Kit™". There is no mention of salt in these instructions at all.

Far more important than salt is the use of the proper dye fixative for the dyes in a tie-dyeing kit. Neither salt nor vinegar can be used to set the dyes, which are a type of dye known as fiber reactive dyes. The best dye fixative to use is the household chemical sodium carbonate, which is also known as soda ash or washing soda. In the best tie-dyeing kits, such as the Jacquard Products tie-dyeing kit, the soda ash is provided separately, to be mixed with water and used as a pre-soak before applying the dye. 

However, in Tulip brand tie-dyeing kits, the soda ash, or a substitute for it, is combined with the dye powder itself, before you ever buy the kit. This means that the dye must be used immediately after you mix it with water, because, in the presence of soda ash, the dye will start to react with the water as soon as it is dissolved in water. You do not need to add anything else that is not called for in the instructions for the dye you bought. Some Tulip instructions do advise that a soda ash presoak (purchased separately) will make the colors more intense, apparently because the substitute for soda ash that they mix with the dye powder is inferior to soda ash.

The good thing about Tulip tie-dye kits is that they contain an excellent sort of dye, called fiber reactive dye or Procion dye. The same is true of most tie-dyeing kits. Unfortunately, it is possible to buy tie-dyeing kits that contain an entirely inappropriate type of dye, sold under the Rit dye label; the dye in Rit tie-dye kits does not bond well to fabric, so the colors bleed together and fade quickly. Other brands of tie-dyeing kit are more reliable.

Salt can be useful in other types of dyeing. See the FAQ entry, "Do I need to use salt, in dyeing?".  When you use good dyes, the purpose of salt is simply to help keep the negative charge of the fabric from repelling the negatively-charged dye molecules, but only if you are using several gallons of water in a large dyebath. Salt can also be used for special effects in fabric painting; see "Salt Effects in Fabric Painting".

If your dyes did not work as you wanted them to, it was probably for another reason, other than salt. In that case, I might be able to help you to figure out what went wrong. However, your shirts and napkins will probably look fine when you wash out the dye, as long as you used a good tie-dyeing kit and as long as the fabric is 100% cotton or linen, and not treated with any sort of stain-resistance.

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