Name: Kerry

Message: I so hope you have some useful info for me! I have dyed several washloads of expensive irreplaceable items in my machine with dylon machine dye and have recently found out that they are bleeding colour after many many washes. Given that it is on more than one load I believe there is something wrong with my machine (can you guess what? heat, maybe?). Dye jobs before worked well. A couple of the items are silk cotton blends and I don't want to do something that may harm them. To further add to my worry I have sold two items already. (As personal sales, I'm not a business). I would be extremly grateful for your imput.

Dylon Machine Dye contains good fiber reactive dyes, mostly Drimarene K dyes and some Remazol dyes. Once they have bonded properly to the fabric, no dye should rinse out except for the dye that originally failed to bond to the fiber. There is always some dye that does not make this chemical bond, due to reacting with the water rather than the fiber.  An essential part of the dyeing process is a careful washout of all of the excess unattached dye.

The most important factor in washing out excess unattached dye is water temperature. Always start your washing-out with a cool water rinse to remove salt and other auxiliary chemicals, but don't stop there. Hot water is far more efficient at dye removal than warm water is; hotter water is even better. Wash your items in the hottest water they can tolerate. I recommend a minimum of 140°F (60°C) if possible. Some dyers use a briefer washout process with hotter water. Even boiling water will not remove properly bonded fiber reactive dye; it will remove only the unwanted dye which failed to bond to the fabric. To conserve energy by reducing the number of washings required, soak your garments in hot water.

Many dyers recommend Synthrapol detergent for washout. (See "What is Synthrapol?".) However, other detergents will work fine for this step. Only a small amount of detergent is required for washing out excess dye; larger amounts of detergent do not interfere with dye removal, but are unnecessary.

Hard water is a serious impediment to dye washout. Your address in the UK suggests that you may have serious problems with hard water. The calcium and magnesium ions in hard water can form complexes with the unattached dye molecules, complexes which can be difficult to wash out. The solution to this problem is to add a water softener, sodium hexametaphosphate, to your dyeing solutions and your washing-out water. You can order this from any good dye supplier, such as Fibrecrafts in the UK. Do not substitute a phosphate-free water softener, as the polycarboxylates in these products can interfere with dye color intensity. See "Dyeing with hard water: water softeners, distilled water, and spring water".

Another problem which is much more difficult to deal with is the use of sizings such as starch in the fabric, before you buy it. Starch will happily take the same dye that cotton does, but then the dyed starch gradually washes out, creating an appearance of non-washfastness. You can test your garments for the presence of starch, before dyeing, by placing a drop of tincture of iodine on the white fabric; if it turns blue or black, there is a lot of starch in the fabric, which will cause problems in dyeing.

Always prewash carefully before dyeing fabric or clothing. The finishes on the fabric may interfere with dyeing.

Occasionally a garment or fabric yardage which has been sold with a claim of being 100% cotton or silk will turn out to have been mislabeled, and actually contain synthetic fibers such as polyester or acetate. These fibers will not take the dye. If your fabric is supposed to be 100% cotton, when it is actually 50% cotton and 50% polyester, the dye will not take as well as you expect. Polyester will not take any ordinary dye, and can be dyed with special polyester dyes only if you boil it with them.

After you have completed a thorough washout in the hottest water possible, if you are still having problems with incomplete washout and the resulting bleeding of dye, you can buy a commercial cationic dye fixative, such as Retayne, which can "set" the remaining excess dye in place. Never use these products on a fiber reactive dye until you have made a strong effort to wash out all of the excess unattached dye, because using the fixative before most of the excess dye has washed out can cause problems with back-staining if you are doing any form of multicolored dyeing, such as tie-dyeing or dye painting. Retayne and other dye fixatives can be purchased in a quilting supply store or by mail-order from a good dye supplier. A brand of direct dye fixative carried by Fibrecrafts in the UK is DEKA L Fixative; this is probably the same sort of product as Retayne. See "Commercial Dye Fixatives (Retayne, Raycafix, Dyefix, Dharma Dye Fixative....)".

If you are unable to get a complete washout of the excess unattached dye, you will need to place a warning label on any items you sell, advising the purchaser to wash the item separately from other colors. This is always necessary if you use a less washfast dye, such as Rit all-purpose dye or DEKA L direct dye. It is usually not necessary with good fiber reactive dyes such as Dylon Machine Dye.

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