Name: Wendy

Message: Hi, Love your site, we'll be tie dying shirts for our sailing camp this summer, about 100 shirts.  I was planning on buying the Tulip kits at Michaels.  My question is about washing, we won't have laundry facilities, how much of a pain would it be to wash all them out by hand...or should we look for a nearby laundramat?  Also, is the Tulip kit the best way to go with such a large quantity?  Thanks in advance for your help!

I think that washing out by hand would be a lot of trouble! I'd rather wash them out in a laundromat. However, if you must do it by hand, it will doable, if you enlist your students in the washing-out. Washing a hundred shirts by hand yourself would be backbreaking. 

If you take them to a laundromat, you'll want to throw them all together into one container, probably. If you do this, you must be very sure that all of the dye has reacted first, before you allow one shirt to touch another. The secret to making sure that the dye has all reacted is to give it plenty of time at a warm enough temperature. Otherwise, some of the dye from one part of one shirt might permanently stain a lighter region on another shirt. Leaving the shirts in a warm place, 70°F or warmer, overnight, will be sufficient. The dyes, if they are kept warm long enough, in the presence of soda ash, will all have reacted with either the fabric or the water. Fully reacted dyes will not stain permanently, because they can be washed out in hot water.

I recommend that you rinse the shirts, or run them through the washer without detergent, in cool water first, to get rid of the soda ash. Then you should wash in the hottest water available, one or two wash cycles, to remove unattached excess dye. There is always a lot of unattached excess dye.

If you hand wash the shirts, again you should start by rinsing in cool water, then use the hottest water available. Excess dye washes out much more efficiently in hotter water. You can pour very hot water over the shirts and leave them to soak for an hour or two if you prefer, to save on the amount of water required. It will still take a lot of water, however.

If you have time, consider mail-ordering a large tie-dyeing kit from PRO Chemical & Dye or from Dharma Trading Company. The kits from these companies are very high in quality, and they are more economical than the kits sold by Michaels. Like the Tulip kits, the kits from these suppliers contain good Procion MX type dye, plastic squeeze bottles and the soda ash needed to fix the dye. Don't forget to buy at least a hundred pairs of disposable gloves, and a dust mask to wear while mixing the dye powders.

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