The Dipping Myth

It's always interesting when people ask how I do the designs; many people assume I use the older method of dropping or dipping the tied item into boiling coloured water -- and they express amazement and curiosity about how the work is done. They figure that you must cover up the parts that are not being dyed while you dip the garment in one of the colours. But while the red/pink shirt on my blog page was thrown into the remains of a pot of red dye, everything else has been made by carefully applying cold-water dyes with squeeze bottles.

The only way to get these vibrant colours, as far as I am aware, is to use Procion MX fibre-reactive dyes, which are made to react to sodium carbonate. So you soak the garment in the sodium carbonate (aka soda ash), then squeeze out excess liquid, fold and tie the garment, then you apply the dyes exactly where you want them with squeeze or squirt bottles. Then, wrap the garment in plastic (I usually use secondhand grocery bags) and leave it alone for a while, rinse, and voila!