Name: Mateo

Message: Hi, 
 I am a batik "artist" and I am writing as you you have one of the most informative sites that I have been to. The question I have for you is about staining of the white or waxed areas with other colors and the other I have for you you is about dharma's Navy blue. 

1. Have you had problems with the overdye staining  the white areas and also the  pre dyed areas of the fabric leaving the entire batik dull and and dirty looking? If so is there a way to avoid this aside from adding  more synthrapol  to the  boiling and final washing (yes I rinse all the shirts that I do but this has become an issue as of late, leaving me with many  "dirty" or "old looking batiks").

There are two ways in which a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye can back-stain fabric.

One is by having still-reactive dye in the fabric when you go to rinse it out. When this happens, the unreacted dye can get on the fabric in the wrong place and stain it permanently by reacting with it. There is no way to solve this problem after it happens, since the dye in the wrong places is as firmly attached as that in the right places. The solution is to prevent this by making sure that the dye that you have applied has fully reacted before you wash it out. Some of the dye will have reacted with the fabric and become attached to it, while some will have reacted with the water ("hydrolyzed") and will just have gone bad. Hydrolyzed dye is not a threat because it cannot react. The easy way to make sure that all your dye has reacted is to give it plenty of time; for example, if your dye studio is at least 70°F (21°C), leave your dye reaction to run overnight, while making sure (with either urea in the dye mixture, or plastic over the fabric) that the dye stays moist on the fabric throughout the entire reaction time.

If your dye reaction is too cool, then it will not complete in the time alloted. You may need to take care to use warmer water, always, of course, remaining below the hot temperature at which the batik wax will soften. Water that is 90°F or 100°F (32°C or 38°C) will help speed the dye reaction without softening your wax. There are various ways to keep your dye reaction warm, but that is the subject of another article.

The other form of backstaining is caused by dye that has already hydrolyzed, so it cannot form the permanent covalent bond that holds Procion MX dye to the fabric under optimal conditions. However, the dye can still associate with the fabric, albeit more loosely, in much the same way that all-purpose dye associates with cotton. Once this has happened, the solution is HOT water. When you rinse out your dye after dyeing, you start with cool water to remove all dye auxiliaries such as soda ash or salt. After that, you should use hot water to remove the dye, at least 140°F (60°C) if possible, and soak the fabric in the hot water for a little while. Hotter water is more effective still at removing excess unattached dye. A fairly short washing in nearly-boiling water will remove excess unattached Procion MX dye very effectively. This should be happening already when you boil out your wax after you are done batiking, shouldn't it?

There can be added complications that make it harder to wash out dye. If the water is hard, the hardness minerals can form complexes with the dyes which are much more difficult to wash out. In this case, add a small amount of sodium hexametaphosphate to the water for every step of dyeing, even the dye wash-out stage if necessary. See my FAQ on "We have very hard water. Should I use distilled or spring water instead of tap water?".

Another complication that can make dye appear to be difficult to wash out is the presence of sizing in the fabric. This should not be a problem if you are starting with PFD ("prepared for dyeing") fabric. If there is starch in the fabric, a drop of tincture of iodine, placed on the apparently clean fabric, will reveal the presence of the starch by turning blue. Starch is extraordinarily difficult to full remove from fabric. Even boiling with soda ash will not do it. Starch in the fabric will react with the dye in just the same way as the cellulose in the fabric, but will gradually wash out, giving the appearance of poor washfastness. Never dye fabric that has been sized with starch, and beware of other sizings as well, which may be equally problematic for one reason or another.

A more common complication that leads to difficult wash-out of excess dye is failure to use a cool rinse before washing in hot water. The presence of auxiliary chemicals such as salt or soda ash, when you put the fabric in hot water, may encourage the dye to form those loose associations that are like those of the direct dye in all-purpose dye mixtures. These associations makes washing-out so much more difficult! Never do you very first rinse of Procion MX or other fiber reactive dye in hot water. Always use cool water first to remove all auxiliary chemicals.

The other problem that I have been having in the past 6 months is the navy blue from Dharma not being as deep as I would like to have it (I do many night batiks and this is a color that I use to set off the rest of the colors) when the boiling and washing is done I am finding that the color is washed out and there is webbing where the wax has cracked leaving the color pale and almost bleached out.
We have taken to filling buckets with water and letting it sit over night to eliminate any of the chlorine in the water but it seems like this may be  happening in the the rinse or boiling time....please let  me know if there is anything that you think may help.
Much thanks

When your dye is failing to properly react with your fabric, which is what you are describing here, there are a number of different possible reasons. Number one is dye studio temperature: at what temperature is your dye reaction taking place, and for how long are you leaving it at this temperature? Procion MX type dyes react with the fabric very poorly below about 70°F (21°C). The warmer the dye reaction, the faster it goes.

Another possible cause of a poor dye reaction is bad fabric. If the fabric is sized with who-knows-what modern polymer surface treatment, or treated to make it permanent-press or stain-resistant, there's no telling what will happen. Of course, fabric that is not 100% cotton (or silk or rayon) is not going to react well. Occasionally fabric is mistakenly sold under the label of "100% cotton" when it is actually 50% polyester, which will not take dye well. I would advise you to use only PFD fabric from trustworthy sources for your batik fabric. Any cotton or rayon fabric purchased from Dharma Trading Company, Jacquard Fabrics, or TestFabrics Inc., for example, should be fine. You just need to use PFD cotton or rayon fabric.

Sometimes a problem occurs in which soda ash is not being used as dye activator (funny name, "dye activator", since it is actually the fabric that gets activated, not the dye). One dyer reported buying clearly labeled sodium carbonate from a swimming pool supplier or hardware store which was actually sodium BIcarbonate, a related chemical that does not produce an adequately high pH. This is very rare, but it has happened. Occasionally a dyer will confuse their bags of white chemicals and use urea when they mean to be using soda ash, which will produce very pale colors indeed. Urea does no harm but does nothing to fix the dye.

Also, fiber reactive dye can go bad with time. Sometimes it lasts for only one year from the time your order it from your supplier. The dye lasts for several years after manufacture, but you have no idea how much time as elapsed before the manufacturer sold it to the retailer, or before the retailer sold it to you.  Storage conditions matter, too. If the dye is in a hot car with the windows closed, in the sun, for even just one day, or if it spends time in a hot delivery truck in the summer that gets up to 120°F, the dye may spoil almost immediately.

As you can see, you have a number of possible factors to test. I would advise you to do some test batiks, running through all of these variables, but using just a few scrawls of hot wax on fabric, rather than any artful design. You should be able to narrow down just what your problems may be.

One last detail:
there is webbing where the wax has cracked leaving the color pale and almost bleached out

If you do not like the amount of crackle you are getting in your dyeing, use a higher proportion of beeswax, or use pure beeswax instead of beeswax mixed with paraffin. You may substitute synthetic microcrystalline or "sticky" wax for beeswax, for the sake of economy.

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