Rinsing Out

So now you have your trays of material soaking in the dyes, you can experiment with how long you leave them, I would recommend a minimum of 2 hours for a lighter shade up to about 6 hours, you can leave them overnight but anything after 6 hours does not seem to make a difference to the colour.

Now make sure you have your gloves on and have protected the area around the sink / bath with plastic sheeting.

Have a couple of cloths and an old towel to hand for drips and plenty of cold water!

I start by giving the material a squeeze to drain off the excess dye then a quick immersion into a bucket of cold water or under a running tap. Another squeeze to get rid of the water then straight into another bucket of clean water.

Repeat this until you have got rid of most of the dye, the water will not run clear at this stage so do not repeat too many times. I would say 3 good rinses with clean cold water would do.

Then you are going to pop into the washing machine, if you are dying similar colours you can throw them in together, but on this first cycle I would not mix colours.

40-60 degree short cycle with no powder.

After the first cycle you can remove any string/elastic or lengths of material used in the resistance techniques. THIS IS MY FAVE BIT, then you can see how the patterns have turned out!

They will need a second cycle but at this stage they can be washed with other material of other colours, if I do not have enough for a load I will hang them up to dry as they are ready for a second wash at a later date.

If you are not using the resist techniques then one wash will be enough.