Tie Dye Terms

If you’re new to tie dyeing, you may not be familiar with some of the tie dye terms. I thought I would take this blog post and try to define a few of the common terms you may hear.

  1. Liquid Dyeing - Mixing the powdered Procion MX fiber reactive dye with water (and possibly other chemicals) to use as a liquid.

  2. Ice Dyeing - Using the powdered Procion MX fiber reactive dye in powdered form along with ice on the shirt.

  3. OWB - Out White Brite Laundry Whitener

  4. DOI - To place the dye over the ice when ice dyeing.

  5. DUI - To place the dye under the ice when ice dyeing.

  6. TDS - Tall deep scrunches

  7. Muck - The runoff from the melting ice that is mixed with the dye. When you “muck" dye you leave the garment in the container along with the muck.

  8. Rack Dyeing - To place the item on top of a rack where the dye can run through the item instead of it being allowed to sit in the “muck”.

  9. Splits - When a dye color splits into the component colors that were combined to make that dye color. This is a common term that is used in ice dyeing. Most powdered Procion MX dye colors are a combination or mixture of several powdered dye colors. The colors a lot of the time will “split” out when the dye used for ice dyeing. This is one of the things that makes ice dyed shirts have a very unique look.

  10. HWI - Hot water irrigation

  11. LWI - Low water immersion

  12. Batching or Processing - To allow the shirt or item to sit to allow the dye to properly bond with the fabric.

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Dharma Trading Company Color Swatches

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Choosing Tie Dye Colors