Name: Gabby

Country: USA
Message: Hi, I am working on a science fair project for Chemistry. Could you possibly answer a few of these questions?

1- Are you familiar with any research on how vinegar can effect the color of tie-dyes? 
2- Do you have any ideas that might help me do a project on this?
3- Could you tell me a little about this topic?

Vinegar will not affect tie-dye, at least not in any helpful way. Vinegar does not set the dyes that are used on cotton. The use of vinegar to set dyes is a useless old wives' tale. See the following pages:

• "FAQ: Is there any way to "set" dye in purchased clothing?"
• "What kind of vinegar should I soak my tie-dyed shirts in?"
• "Can one set the colors for tie dying with vinegar when the project is complete rather than buying the sodium carbonate and soaking the fabric before dyeing?"

I would suggest you use a different chemical other than vinegar. The chemical that is used to set the dyes in a good tie-dye kit is soda ash, also known as sodium carbonate or washing soda. You can buy a Jacquard brand tie dye kit and use it for your experiments. You could try dyeing three pieces of cotton fabric (or three t-shirts, or three cotton handkerchiefs): one with soda ash to presoak the shirt in, as recommended in the instructions, one with just plain water, and even, if you like, one with vinegar. The only shirt that the dye will work well on is the one with soda ash; for the others, the dye will wash out, because soda ash is important for getting the dye to set. The vinegar shirt will be by far the worst, if you're dyeing cotton.

It is important to choose the right type of tie-dye kit. Never buy the Rit tie-dye kit, because it contains the wrong type of dye for tie-dyeing, and will fade extremely quickly in the wash, possibly also ruining your other clothes that you wash with it. You can often find the Jacquard Tie Dye Kit, or the Funky Groovy Tie Dye Kit, which is also made by Jacquard, at your local crafts store, or you can mail-order it from an art supply store such as Blick Art Materials, or, even better, from a dye supplier such as Dharma Trading Company. There is another brand, Tulip, which contains the same good type of dye as the Jacquard kits, but they might already have mixed the soda ash powder with the dye, which would make it impossible to try just leaving it out. You could still compare the effect of the Tulip Tie Dye kit on clean t-shirts versus vinegar-soaked t-shirts. Since the vinegar will neutralize the soda ash in the tie-dye kit, it will prevent the dye from bonding well to the fabric, so it will wash out.

It's also important to choose the right kind of fabric. You should use 100% cotton fabric, or cotton t-shirts that are made of 100% cotton, unless you decide to compare how well different fabrics work.

There is a lot of additional advice on doing science fair projects using dyes on my web site. Spend some time looking at the links on the schoolwork topic in my Hand Dyeing Q&A blog. Scroll down to see the titles of the different articles answering students' questions on the science of dyeing. I particularly recommend these:

• "5th Grade Science Project on What Materials Dye the Best"
• "Graphing Dye Experiment Results for a Science Fair Project"
• "Dependent and Independent variables in a Dyeing Experiment"

Depending on how advanced your grade level is, you can also find out a lot more about the chemistry of how dyes work on my web site. If you have more questions, I can try to answer them, but you may find the answers already provided on my site.

Good luck with your project. Dyes make very good subjects for science fair projects, because the chemicals are reasonably non-toxic, and you can really see how well the dyes do or do not work.

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