Name: Laurie

Message: I love your site, so much information! I am wondering if you can use the salt tecnique on cotton or does it just work on silk

In the salt technique, crystals of salt placed on the wet colors pull the color around to make starburst effects. This technique  can work on cotton, if you are using a thin cotton, stretched on a frame of some sort (or pinned onto a work surface), with a heat-set fabric paint or a steam-set fiber reactive dye. It is unlikely to work if the cotton is too thick, or not stretched at all, or if you use a fast-acting fabric paint or cool water fiber reactive dye.

The reason why the salt technique will not work as well with instant-set paints or cold water reactive dyes is that the dye or pigment will begin to bond to the fiber immediately, before the salt has a chance to move it around.

Dye-na-Flow is one of several good transparent fabric paints that can be used to produce salt effects on stretched thin woven cotton. Here are the instructions provided by the manufacturer:

For more information on using salt effects, see "How do you use Silk Salt or other large salt crystals to make bursts of color?".

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