Name: Donna
Message: My son tie-dyed a shirt blue then washed it with a load of whites. It blead on to my other white clothing. How can I get this out of my whites? Thank You

What kind of dye did he use?

Properly tie-dyed clothing, made with good fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, should be safe to wash with white clothing at any temperature, unless the initial washing out of excess dye has not been performed adequately.

However, all-purpose dye is a completely different story. It will continue to bleed in the laundry for the life of the garment. This is one of several reasons to never use all-purpose dye for tie-dyeing cotton.

In any case, the first thing to do is wash the bled-upon garments in HOT water, with detergent. In many cases the excess heat will remove loosely-associated dye.

If that fails, then, if the garments are bleachable, you can use regular chlorine bleach in the laundry. Chlorine bleach is an extraordinarily destructive substance. It will break up the molecules of most dyes, in many cases resulting in no color. (Sometimes it results in an odd shift to another color altogether.)

An alternative to chlorine bleach is Rit Color Remover. It is sold in a small box next to the boxes of Rit brand all-purpose dye which are sold in many grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. While I cannot recommend the use of all-purpose dye on cotton, Rit brand Color Remover is an excellent product. It may take out other color from the garments, but if they were all white originally, this will not be a problem for you.