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.
Liquid Dyeing - Mixing the powdered Procion MX fiber reactive dye with water (and possibly other chemicals) to use as a liquid.
Ice Dyeing - Using the powdered Procion MX fiber reactive dye in powdered form along with ice on the shirt.
OWB - Out White Brite Laundry Whitener
DOI - To place the dye over the ice when ice dyeing.
DUI - To place the dye under the ice when ice dyeing.
TDS - Tall deep scrunches
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.
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”.
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.
HWI - Hot water irrigation
LWI - Low water immersion
Batching or Processing - To allow the shirt or item to sit to allow the dye to properly bond with the fabric.