Name: Penny

Message: I have tried to dye terrycloth bath towels a dark brown.  I have used the liquid dye, hot water, and used salt to set the color.  Every time we use the wash cloths and towels the color seems to come out of the cloth, down the drain.  I am tired of redying these articles. Is there something I am doing wrong?  Please help me.  

Are you using Rit Liquid Dye? The problem with this this type of dye is that, as you have observed, it is not very permanent. You will get tremendously better results if you use a higher quality dye.

The dye you need to use is called fiber reactive dye. You will not be able to buy good dye at the grocery store. You can find it at a crafts store, or for much better prices and a far wider range of color, with a hundred different choices, you can mail-order dye from a good dye supplier, such as PRO Chemical & Dye, or Dharma Trading Company. 

If you go to a local crafts store, look for Tulip One Step Fabric Dye, or Jacquard Procion MX Dye, or Dylon Cold Dye, or Dylon Permanent Dye. If you live in Europe or Australia, you can also look for Dylon Machine Dye, but this dye, designed for front-loading washing machines, is not available in North America. Read the instructions on the packet carefully, because you will need to buy a lot of the little packets of dye. In many cases, the packet is sufficient only to dye half a pound of fiber, which means you might need four packets in order to dye a two-pound towel. (Weigh all of the towels you plan to dye together, to find out how many pounds of fabric you are dyeing.) If you can find Jacquard Products' Procion MX Dye in your local crafts store — only very good crafts stores will carry it — then that is by far the best choice; a two-thirds ounce jar (20 grams) will dye up to four pounds of fabric to a medium shade, or two pounds to a dark shade.

Whatever you do, please avoid all forms of all-purpose dye, such as Rit Liquid Dye, Rit All Purpose "concentrated" Tint and Dye, Dylon Multi Purpose Dye, or Tintex Easy Fabric Dye. None of these dyes are designed to last for a long time on your towels. They begin to fade the very first time you wash them, and when they run in the laundry they can ruin your other clothes.

I strongly recommend that you buy your dye by mail-order. Procion MX dye from a company that specialized in dye will cost you about one-tenth as much, per pound of fabric dyed, as the tiny packets of any sort of dye you can buy in your local crafts store. See my page "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World" for contact information and web site links for good dye suppliers. You will probably like Dharma Trading Company the best; be sure to request a catalog of all of their products when you order. They use the name "Dharma Fiber Reactive Procion Dyes" for their Procion MX dyes. If you have eight pounds of towels to dye brown, using the washing machine in order to get a perfectly solid color, you will need one tablespoon of dye per pound of fabric, plus a total of 20 cups of non-iodized salt, and 2.5 cups of soda ash to fix the dye. (Note that soda ash, which performs phenomenally well in fixing Procion MX dye, will do nothing at all to fix low-quality all-purpose dye. It only works for fiber reactive dyes.)

For instructions on how to dye your towels in the washing machine, see my page "How can I dye clothing or fabric in the washing machine?".

Another essential thing to note is the the fiber content of your towels is very important. Are your towels made of 100% cotton, or rayon, or bamboo, or modal? Each of these fibers will dye very well, given the right dye, but a 50% polyester or nylon towel will not.

There is a special chemical laundry treatment, Retayne, you can use to make Rit All-Purpose dye stop washing out so much. Unfortunately, it tends to make the dyes fade more quickly when they are exposed to light, that is, it reduces their lightfastness. Also, it is just as much trouble to mail-order Retayne as it is to order good dye, but good dye is more fun and will work for more methods of dyeing. I think that it is better to substitute good dye, rather than relying on a chemical after-treatment. Of course, neither salt nor vinegar will work to permanently fix all-purpose dye; the only hope for making Rit dye work well is to mail-order some Retayne or another brand of commercial dye fixative.

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