Message: I am a manufacturer and have a huge problem.  I have a dress made of 55% Linen 45% Rayon.  The dress is red and has white binding along the armhole, neckline, center front and hems.  The red fabric is crocking onto the white fabric.  I've soaked the dress in Retayne then followed by a soaking of Carbona.  After soaking the dress in Carbona the red came off the white but the red fabric itself turned orange.  Is there any solution to this with the exception of Raycafix?  Please help am desperate.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I have any good answer to the problem with the crocking of the dye on your red dress. Dye that is crocking (rubbing when dry) is a terrible problem. I don't know whether Raycafix will work with your dye. If you want to try it, call G&S Dyes in Toronto first to see whether they advise it.

If the fabric had not already been sewn to the white binding, I'd suggest soaking it in hot water, and then washing it in hot water, to try to get rid of the excess dye. This will sometimes work, though it may get rid of the color you want. However, if your problem dye was a direct dye that had been applied reasonably correctly, the Retayne would already have solved your problem. Instead it sounds like what you have there may be a vat dye that has been misapplied. 

Carbona is a brand name for many very different products made by the Carbona company, but if what you used was Carbona Color Run Remover, then you were using sodium hydrosulfite, a chemical also known as sodium dithionite. This chemical works to remove direct dyes, acid dyes, and fiber reactive dyes, by reducing their bonds. However, it is not advisable to use it to try to discharge vat dyes, because it does not work. Instead, the reducing chemical turns the vat dye to a soluble form, so that it can run even better. When vat dye is chemically reduced, it will change color. The blue indigo used to dye denim for blue jeans turns yellow when it is reduced, and then back to blue when it is oxidized. It may be that orange is the color that your red vat dye turns when it is reduced.

I'm afraid that any kind of fix you can do will encourage the red to continue to run onto the white. If you were to treat the garment with something like the binder that is used in pigment dyeing, the water in the dyebath would probably cause more red to run.

If you could only stop the crocking, you could then redye the red part of the dress, to make it red again, but that's no a simple matter, either. If you immersion dye the dress in a bucket, the new layer of dye will color the white binding as well as the red/orange fabric.  Perhaps this is the best approach, giving up altogether on the idea of that white binding. It makes sense to use white binding only if the colored fabric you use with it has been dyed in such a way that the dye will not run. Whoever decided to use white binding on that red fabric made a serious error in judgement.

Before using white binding with dyed fabric, it's best to test the fabric to see whether the dye will run. Properly fixed fiber reactive dye will not run at any temperature, once the excess unattached dye has been washed out. Inadequately fixed dye, and direct dye, can be fixed with Retayne or Raycafix before sewing, or the improperly fixed dye can be removed by washing the fabric in hot water, before sewing anything white onto it. Once the white binding has been sewn onto the dyed fabric, it's too late to use Retayne to prevent the dye from bleeding, and Retayne does not work on vat dyes, anyway.

It is possible to cover only some parts of a dress with dye, by using a fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, thickening it with alginate, and painting the dye only where you want it to be. However, it is likely that, even thickened, some of the wet dye will seep onto the white binding. It's a fussy procedure and there's a high risk that it won't work. It hardly matters, anyway, if you still have a problem with the original dye crocking. Crocking is a terrible problem.

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