Where can I get some dye fixative, fast?

Name: Di

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Tom Rolofson and Martine Purdy's

Advanced Tie Dye Techniques: Making Shapes and Mandalas

Country or region: USA

Message: Hi was told ritz dye worked good for tie dying and have the banded ones 1/2 soaking in the dye bath now. Then I read about the having to put something on it to keep it from bleeding out. I have called all our craft stores here and nobody has any. Where can I get some and fast? I was making these shirts for the 4th of July. Dang !

It would be easier to wash those shirts now in hot water, to get the Rit dye out, and then start over on them with a better dye. Unfortunately, all-purpose dye, such as Rit dye, is really not a good dye for tie-dyeing.

The best way to quickly get the materials you need to make high-quality tie-dyes, with the minimum of work, would be to call those same crafts stores, or a sewing store, and find one that sells a good tie-dyeing kit. Look for the Jacquard tie-dyeing kit, or a smaller kit made by the same manufacturer that is called the Funky Groovy Tie-Dye Kit. If you can't find those, look for a kit made by Tulip, such as the Tulip Ultimate Tie-Dye Kit or the Tulip One Step Tie-Dye Kit. All of these kits contain high-quality fiber reactive dyes, which will stay bright and vibrant for years. Avoid the Rit tie-dye kit.

Even if you could find the right dye fixative for all-purpose dye locally, the fixative will not make it suitable for multi-colored tie-dyeing. All-purpose dyes run easily in the wash. The first time you wash the shirts (which you must do to prevent loose dye from rubbing off), bits of the dye dissolve in the water and are then redeposited on other parts of the fabric. As a result, the colors become dull very quickly. The commercial dye fixative Retayne, and similar products, will work to stop all-purpose dye from fading so quickly in the laundry, but they cannot keep the dyes vibrant and unmuddied in the first place. For that, you need to use a fiber reactive dye, such as the Procion dyes that are used in all the good tie-dye kits.

Over the years, I have received many sad emails from people who got bad results from trying to tie-dye with all-purpose dye. The colors are dull and fade quickly. When these same people try using a higher quality dye, such as the ones in the Jacquard or Tulip kits, they write about how amazingly better their tie-dyes look. Using the right materials makes a huge difference in how attractive the tie-dye shirts you make will turn out to be. It's really not worth the effort to try to tie-dye with inferior dyes, when you could just go to a craft or sewing store and buy the high-quality type of dye.

All-purpose dye works better for a single color tie-dye. If you tie circles or bulls-eyes into a shirt, you can drop it into a pot of boiling Rit dye and get pretty reasonable results, especially if you manage to buy some Retayne from a quilting supply shop or online to stop the dye from running. When you use only a single color, you don't have to worry about the colors running together and turning muddy. This is the original type of tie-dye that has been done for hundreds of years. Multi-colored tie-dye did not become practical until better dyes were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.

Whatever you do, don't try to use all-purpose dye, such as Rit dye, at room temperature. All-purpose dye is a hot water dye: it must be used in water that is simmering on the stovetop in order to work at all. Soaking at room temperature does not work. The dye will mostly wash out in the laundry.

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Posted: Wednesday - June 29, 2011 at 04:42 PM

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Where can I get some dye fixative, fast?

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