Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Gee, it would help if I’d think of things to write about as I am doing them, so that I can take photos!

Duh. Anyhow, because today turned into a rainy day and I didn’t have anything else I needed to do I decided to dye some shirts.

Little short excursion into shirts for a bit here… I’ve been trying to buy Fruit of the Loom pocket tee’s for Ron for a while now. In white, they have to be white. Walmart USED to carry them, but now all they have are colors. So, last weekend I did a search on Amazon, came up with a few… but more importantly I happened to look at a “sponsored link” on the page. JiffyShirts.com was the link and so I checked it out. Well, howdy! They have the FOTL shirts I want, and reasonably priced… and SUPER reasonably priced shipping. So I ordered 15 of them. I ordered on Saturday and they were here on Tuesday. Considering that they only ship during the week, that was astounding!

Today I looked at some of their other shirts. They carry the same ones I buy from Dharma, only cheaper, not to mention way less shipping. I think I’ve found a new shirt supplier. Dharma is in California, I can get dyes from closer so less shipping… I may not be ordering much from Dharma this year.

Another thing I did today was this morning I went to Walmart. Clearance is right by the pool supplies and I knew I needed Soda Ash. Guess what was just opposite the pool supplies? FOTL pocket tees in white. Four shirts in a pack for $9.50. I got the only two packages in Ron’s size that they had. Sheesh. Well, at least now he won’t be running out of shirts for a long while! LOL!

So, on to dyeing. First, we prewash the shirts. Hottest water, some Synthrapol or laundry detergent, and sometimes I put some soda ash in the wash, too. You just want to make sure that any manufacturing chemicals or dirt are off the fabric. Leave the fabric damp.

Mix your dyes up. For cotton fabrics and shirts you want Procion MX dyes. Cover your work area with newspaper and wearing a dust mask and gloves, mix the colors you want to use. I fill canning jars devoted to dyeing about 1/2 full of lukewarm water and then add the dye powder to that. I guess you are supposed to add the water to the dye, but I like to measure the water first and then dump the dye in. Some people advise to paste up the dye too, but I never have. Stir, stir, stir and then stir some more. Various colors can be hard to dissolve. Some never completely dissolve and can leave tiny dye spots on your fabric. Fuchsia is a problem color, so I sometimes filter it with a piece of nylon stocking. Didn’t bother today. You want 2 to 4 teaspoons of dye per cup of water for most colors… I use a VERY heaping teaspoon to sort of standardize my colors. It’s best to weigh the dye, but that is also a lot of trouble and I think the less time the dye powder has to float around, the better.

I use various things to dye IN for LWI. Ice Cream buckets work great for most things, but I also use wide mouth canning jars, plastic canisters and various saved jars that are large enough to take a shirt or two. All are dedicated to dyeing, never used for anything else. You want your fabric or shirt to fit fairly tight in the container, but still have room to be adding liquid. Ice cream buckets are pretty perfect. Free, too, and we don’t even eat ice cream that much… I get em from Ron’s family.

So, we’ve got a couple of damp shirts squished into an ice cream bucket. Now comes the fun and messy part of it. Pour dye on top of the fabric in random patterns. If you are patient and don’t want to make much of a mess, then foam brushes work great for applying the dye to fabric. That’s what I use when I’m doing classic tie dye. For most of the shirts I do in buckets, though, I just dump some out of the jar I mixed in. It can be messy, with drips down the side of the jar but I keep a damp rag handy. Two colors, sometimes more, but you do want to pick colors that will play well together because they are going to get mixed around on that shirt.

It takes about 1/2 to 1 cup of dye per average shirt for nice bright colors. Let it sit for a while, and see if it looks like dye has migrated to the bottom. If not, you can add more dye to it or just some water to help things along, but that will dilute the dye a bit. You do want to see color at the bottom of your bucket, but NOT the shirt swimming in liquid. I have added dye/water to about 1 inch in the ice cream bucket, but usually have a lot less than that.

You can let this sit for a few hours, or just an hour or so depending on how much dye and water you’ve added. It can be hard to judge for a beginner, so, to make sure your color has migrated enough you can put on gloves and carefully pick up bits of fabric. Some bits look white? That’s fine, it’ll make your colors pop. Major areas are white? You need more dye and/or water to help the dye move along. It will move some more after you fix it, so don’t get too carried away. We aren’t going for solid colors… LWI is way too interesting to just get one plain color.

After the dye has migrated to your satisfaction, it’s time to fix it. Mix 1 cup of soda ash (sodium carbonate) to one gallon warm water. Stir until completely dissolved… which can take a while as it wants to lump up. Pour into your dye bucket until your shirts are completely submerged…. or would be, if they didn’t float. Don’t stir or anything else! And don’t worry if it looks all muddy at this point. You won’t use the whole gallon of soda ash water unless you’ve got 4 or more shirts in buckets and jars, but it won’t go to waste. It keeps forever and is actually a good addition to the washer when you are washing something really grimy.

I cut the rims of the ice cream bucket lids off and use the center piece as plates to hold down my shirts… using other jars full of water on top for weight. You can also just use a jar of water… or even another bucket with some water in a pinch. Be careful not to put too much weight in and overflow everything all over the place! (Messy is one reason I do most of my dye work outside)

Now, we let the buckets sit. A few hours if you are impatient, overnight if you are not. Temperature is important. For dyeing with MX dyes you always want to be at least 70 degrees F. Higher is better. The warmer it is, the less time you need to let it sit… so outside in the sun on a summer day, then an hour or two is plenty. Cooler and we want to let it sit longer. Or warm it up. I have been known to put buckets of shirts into the microwave after adding the soda ash fixer, then nuking for 30 seconds at a time until it feels hot. Then let sit until completely cool. If your house is cooler than 70, a heating pad under the bucket or jar is a safer way than the microwave of keeping things warm. :)

The soda ash has to migrate all through the fabric and dye mixture so that the dye will bond with the fabric. But it tends to do that pretty quickly if your container is large enough to add soda ash water until the fabric floats. If, like I did today, you have a ladies shirt squished into a quart jar…. well, you probably want to let that sit for the full overnight thing. It’s always better to let it sit as long as possible… that way the dye will completely react and wash out the excess better. If you’ve ever dyed with protein dyes, using MX dyes will be a shock… the dye comes out, comes out, comes out. You think it’s never going to quit, but it does if you rinse properly. Acid dyes bind with the fiber in the heat…. we saw my dye pot go clear. MX dyes never do that… the water is always going to have unbound dye in it.

So, once the shirts have set in the dye and then the soda ash solution long enough to react… it’s time to rinse. First you rinse in cold water. This is just to get the soda ash out of the shirts. I did it in the bathtub this time, but you can just dump your shirts into the washer filled with cold water and run the cycle. I like to rinse first in a bucket…. rinse, rinse… let soak a bit, rinse some more and then squeeze out.

After the first rinse, you wash. HOT water and detergent/Synthrapol. This is where Synthrapol is better… it pushes the excess dye out of the fabric and keeps it from landing back on the fabric. Hot water is better for getting the excess dye molecules away, too. It’s all about chemistry, and I’m not a chemist…. so I trust the ones who are. :)

Wash in hot, rinse in cold. A batch of 6 shirts or so is not a full load, but I usually run the washer like it is. If I’ve got more shirts dyed, I rinse them better before dropping them into the washer. You will probably find that you need to run 2 full cycles of the wash to get the excess dye out. I usually then turn it to rinse one more time and put in some fabric softener. Soda Ash is hard on fabrics and can make them feel rough if you don’t do a final rinse with softener.

Then you dry… and ready to wear!

If you have any questions, please ask! I know I can skip around a lot.

Hugs,
Vyx

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