Name: Ana

Message: I hope this is not answered, I looked.   Using Procion, after you rinse with cold water, do you let it dry? or can you put in automatically into the washer to wash.  I heard to let it dry,  iron, and then wash. Is this method just for LWI?

There is no need to dry the dyed items before washing them, but you can do it, if for some reason it's more convenient. It won't do any harm, but it is completely unnecessary. The same is true of using the iron. You must use an iron to heat-set fabric paints, such as Dye-na-Flow, but ironing does nothing for Procion type dye, and is completely unnecessary, besides. 

The only thing ironing accomplishes is to smooth wrinkles out of the fabric, but that's better done after the fabric has been washed out, so you don't risk getting excess dye on anything. There's no need to risk getting excess dye on your ironing board.

Procion MX dyes do not need to be heat-set. They do need to be allowed to react with the fabric, in the presence of soda ash, for a certain amount of time, ranging from a few hours to a day or two. While the dyes are reacting with the fiber, they need to be in a warm place, 70°F or warmer, so that the chemical reaction between dye and fiber can proceed.

I always let my tie-dyed items react with the dye overnight in a warm place, then take them, still damp with dye, use blunt-ended scissors to remove the ties, and immediately dump them all in the washing machine together for a cold-water rinse. After that, I run the washer again, washing the stuff in HOT water to get out the unattached excess dye. I can do this because leaving the stuff longer than necessary to react means that there will be no unreacted dye to permanently stain other garments.

If you have hard water, use water softener powder (sodium hexametaphosphate) in your dye mixtures, and also in the wash water. The minerals in hard water can make it hard to wash out Procion dyes.

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