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.