Dye additives

Another thing I plan to test and measure are dyes additives, of which there are quite a few. The first is salt. The company I purchase the dyes from, Dharma Trading, sells Glauber's Salt, and they claim it will make black dye darker and turqoise dye deeper. I will test if this is true, and I will test if table salt works as well. Another additive is urea, which supposedly both makes the dyes stronger and improves the dyes ability to penetrate the fabric. Calsolene oil, another additive they sell, is also supposed to improve penetration. The style of tie dye I do most often, and which I'm pretty good at, is a controlled chaos called marbling. Either the urea and the calsolene oil could prove helpful with this technique. On the other hand, there are several additives they sell that are designed to thichen the dye to prevent it from running all over. The most common one is sodium alginate. I bought some and will test it soon in spirals and other patterns where I want to control where the dye goes.

Curing Comparison

Once the shirts (and other items) have been soaked and dyed they must sit for a while to let the colors stick, a process called curing. I intend to measure whether they need 2 hours, 8 hours, a day, 2 days, or more. I have a friend who insists that his shirts come out brighter if he leaves them in the sun or warms them in a cabinet he designed for that purpose, so I intend to test whether temperature is a factor as well.

Comparing Wash Techniques

There are many things about the wash procedure that I plan to compare and document. Is one soap a better deal than another. How much soap should I use. Should I use one or more of the commercial laundry additives available from my dye supplier, and if so which ones. Should I ever use bleach. How many washes should I give them. Should I wring them out before hand. Should I pull all the rubber bands before the first wash or after a few. Should I use cold water or warm water. Should I let the machine run it's course or should I set it back to the beginning as often as possible. Will colors bleed and stick in the wash cycle. Does the dye set upon drying, as my expert friend suggests, so that you need to wash them a few times, dry them, and then wash them one more time so they don't bleed.

Compare Strength of Soak

Before tie dyes are colored they must be soaked in a sodium carbonate solution that facillitates the binding of the colors to the fabric at a molecular level. The instructions suggest about 1 cup of soda ash to one gallon of water. The instructions also state that if the balance is not right, in either direction, that the results will not be as goo. A friend of mine, who is one of the finest tie dye artists in the world say "the more the merrier" so I intend to test this by doing a series of shirts soaked in a solution that starts at twice the recommended strength in increments of 25%, so there will be a feww at 1.75 recommende strength, down to half as strong as recommended.

Comparison of Dye Strength

The dye I have now is over two years old. Some of the colors don't have the kick they used to, particularly the yellow. When I get new batches of dye in I will conduct tests to determine how strong the dye mix needs to be to get vivid colors. My approach to this will be to have a series of small bottles with dye mixed at various strengths. I will keep a record of each shirt I make showing the pattern, like spiral for example, and what strength of the different colors are used.

Comparative Analysis

I promised to report on the comparisons between products and techniques and so on that I am undertaking with the help of the grant provided by the entrepreneurial program at CMC. One of the comparisons I hope to present soon are pictures of the two shops. The shop in Leadville was a tiny cramped basement that was also a storage room, a laundry room, and it held the furnace and water heater too. I was forced to do all the different steps on the same table which caused dye to get where I didn't want it. The new shop is a much larger room that is dedicated soley to the production of tiedyes, set up in a "pizza shop" approach, where each step in the procedure is done in a seperate station set up for the task. The shirts move from one spot to the next in a linear fashion. I have taken numerous pictures of the new setup on my new phone. All I have to do now is figure out how to get them from my phone into my computer, and from there out into the internets.

Access!

Hi,

I am just learning how to do things on a computer. I tried to access this site from the invitation to do so sent several months back and it would not let me, however, the link I set up in favorites did. In the next few days I will start posting a whole bunch of stuff.

Mark