Message: My daughter wants to have a tie-dye birthday party. What dye do you recommend to get the most vibrant colors? We have used the RIt dyes, but the colors are faded. Would I be better to purchase the 50/50 blend shirts or 100% cotton? You have so much information, it is hard to decide on exactly what is the best to use for this purpose.

Don't use all purpose dye (such as Rit brand dye) for tie-dyeing - the boiling-water recipe required is a lot of trouble, and the colors are not as bright nor as washfast. You need to use cool water fiber reactive dye. Mail order will save you a lot of money and get you the highest quality dye. Mail-order fiber reactive dye will cost approximately 1/6 as much as locally-purchased "all purpose" dye, per shirt, and yet it is vastly superior in every way.

I recommend you buy a tie dye kit from http://www.prochemical.com - see http://www.prochemical.com/catalog/mxkits.htm , and use the "cool" colors to get the very brightest results. So-called "warm" colors are more muted. Another good source for kits is Scarlet Zebra - see http://www.scarlet-zebra.com/Dyes/MX-Kits.htm . The kits on the latter page contain more dye and are a better value, and it is the same dye.

You should certainly use 100% cotton. 50% cotton will produce pastels - pretty pastels, but not the vibrancy you asked for. 80% cotton will work well enough, too. 100% is best.