Name: Joe
Message: Hello, I really enjoy 'creating' shirts with tye dye. However, I have never figured out how to keep the colors from bleeding together when they are washed. How do you treat the garment to prevent this? 

What kind of dye are you using? The worst bleeding of colors is found in garments dyed with all-purpose dyes, because all-purpose dye never attaches very firmly to the fabric. Don't use Rit dye for tie-dyeing cotton; instead, use a good fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. Good tie-dye kits contain this kind of dye.

For the rest of this answer, I will assume that you are using a good fiber reactive dye, which will give much better results in tie-dyeing than you can get with all-purpose dye.

The amount of dye blending desired in tie-dyeing varies a great deal. If you want a rainbow effect, it's fine for adjacent colors to blend; you just need to make your bands wide enough that no more than two colors merge in one area. 

The most annoying problem in tie-dyeing is when your dark colors transfer onto light areas in the wash. The most important key to preventing this is to let the dye react long enough. If you wash out your dyes before all of the dye has had time to react, either with the fabric or with the water it's dissolved in, then dye that gets on another part of the garment and make a permanent bond to it. Once that happens, nothing can solve the problem. So the most important thing to remember is to leave your dyed items to react for 24 to 48 hours if the temperature is around 70 degrees F. (21 C.), or for 8 to 16 hours if the temperature is around 88 degrees F. (31 C.). These times should be in excess of that needed to dye the fabric, and therefore help to make sure that every last bit of the unattached excess dye has reacted and is now inert. The amount of time it takes for dye to react with the fiber is inversely related to the temperature at which the reaction occurs. If your garments are at less than 70 degrees F. for the reactive phase, wrap each one in plastic wrap, making sure that there is plastic between any regions of the garment which you do not want sharing their colors, and then bring the garments into a warmer place.

If you are allowing plenty of time for your fiber reactive dye + soda ash + cotton fiber to react, so that no active unattached dye remains, then any dye transfer that occurs should be removable in the washing-out stage. For your first washing, use cool water; then wash in the hottest water you can get, several times, using Synthrapol or another detergent. As a lazy person, I prefer to do all of this washing in the washing machine; I dump all of my freshly-dyed wet garments into the washer on cold for one run, then turn off the cold water to my washing machine (and/or turn up the water heater) for two or three washes in very hot water - the hotter, the better, unless the garment cannot tolerate this abuse.

If you have another problem, which is that the dye is spreading on your garments before you ever wash them, you should start adding a thickener to your dye. The usual thickener used in tie dyeing is sodium alginate, or alginate SH (SH refers to how thick the alginate is; use a different grade for silk). Here is a popular recipe, from Tie-dyed.com: 

Chemical Water (Dye Mix)
------------------------
For 2 cups water (= 500 ml)
Use 1 tsp. of Alginate SH (=5 ml)
Add 1/8 cup Urea (= 2 tablespoons or 30 ml)
Mix with 2 TBS. Procion MX dye powder (= 30 ml)
1 tsp. (= 5 ml) of soda ash to activate (set) the dye to the fabric.
Put in squeeze bottles and dye!

Personally, I prefer to use soda ash as a presoak instead of adding it to the dye as in the above recipe, but you can follow the above recipe without the soda ash, and use the soda ash as a presoak as usual. You might be able to buy alginate at your local crafts store, but more likely you will have to mail-order it. Almost any of the companies listed on my Sources for Dyeing Supplies page will be able to sell it to you.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)