Name: Tres

Region: Florida

Message: My friend and I are starting a small tee shirt company, and we are going to try to create some cool shirts by dying them before having them printed.  What we would like to do is come up with something similar to the lava wash and tea stain effects used by Bare Apparel.  Do you have any tips you can offer us?  You can see the effects we're trying to achieve here and here. Thanks so much for your help!

The most important advice I can give you is don't buy bad dye. Don't use all-purpose dye (such as Tintex or Rit dye) for hand-dyeing; it's too expensive, and gives poor results on cotton.

As a small business, it'll be important for you to cut costs wherever practical. Buy Procion MX dyes, which are both the best dyes for hand-dyeing, and, at the same time, the cheapest of all good dyes, in bulk by mail-order from the least expensive suppliers: PRO Chemical & Dye or Dharma Trading Company for jars of two ounces, eight ounces, or greater, or Artist & Craftsmen Supply or directly from Jacquard Products for jars of eight ounces per color and up, or Standard Dye or Classic Dye for buckets of one pound or more per color. (For contact information and links, see "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World".)

Results with subtle and quiet color variation, as in your example from Bare Apparel shown at the left, can be obtained with fiber reactive dyes, such as the Procion MX dyes, by using the Low Water Immersion technique. See "How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing". You can control the amount of variation with greater or lesser amounts of stirring of the fabric during the dyeing process: more stirring = less variegation. Do not use salt, for these subtle results; in LWI, salt is used only to increase the contrast in the patterns. Using fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dyes, will give you the longest-lasting permenent dye color possible.

The other way to achieve effects similar to your goals is by pigment dyeing, which is the use of fabric paints instead of true dyes to color fabric. Instead of bonding directly to the fiber as true dyes do, the pigment particles (often called pigment "dyes" although they are not dyes) are glued to the fabric by an acrylic binder. Since the pigments lie on the surface of each fiber, instead of penetrating through it like a dye, they wear off far more quickly.  Whenever you're interested in the appearance of instant age, pigment "dyeing" is for you. You can apply the fabric paints by painting or pouring them on, by diluting them (never more than recommended by the manufacturer of the pigment) and dipping the shirt in, or through a machine "dyeing" method. Unfortunately, unlike real dyes, pigment "dyes" will permanently color your washing machine, so we're talking about a considerable investment in equipment for anything above the hand-dyeing level.

The most economical source for appropriate quantities of pigment "dyes" for your purpose will be Dharma Trading Company, which sells their Dharma Pigment Dyeing system in the form of a concentrate that can be diluted with up to four times as much water. This makes it much more cost-efficient than using, for example, Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint, which can be diluted with only a small amount of water. For pigment dyeing on a somewhat larger scale, consider PRO Chemical & Dye's PROfab Color Concentrates; see their info sheets describing "Pigment Dyeing using PROfab Color Concentrates" [PDF] to see how to do this in a top-loading washing machine, but only assuming you don't mind permanent pigment stains in the machine.

Note that, if you are using real dye, you will need to buy 100% cotton shirts to dye. Buying by the case (72 shirts per size) from a wholesaler will reduce your per-shirt cost considerably. If you are doing pigment dyeing, then 50% cotton/50% polyester shirts will do. In any case, always avoid any shirt that is marketed as being stain-resistant or permanent press. The best shirts for dyeing are marked "PFD" and have cotton thread; if not marked as PFD, clothing almost invariably is sewn together with polyester thread which will not take dye, so shirts specifically marked as being sewn with cotton thread are better.

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