I see people are reading and commenting here. Here is my report. soda ash - baking soda (in German Natron, Natriumhydrogencarbonat), but you need to bake it first as Krazyknots writes to make it into "Natriumcarbonat" which in German is called only Soda or washing soda. In fact - I dyed some strings with and without preparing them with anything and it did not make any difference. Maybe with t-shirts because you wash them more often, but with strings that I usually don't wash for me it's OK. But yes, also with cold water, the color may bleed out a little bit getting wet. I bought my tie dye kit on Amazon and I am pretty happy with it! And it needs to be fabric dye (e.g. these batik-sets you get really cheap) and pure cotton thread, otherwise it won't work. It really won't, so just don't even try it with polyester. 😉 And for me really important, don't use too hot water at the end. A good hand warm water will be enough, otherwise it can happen that the colours bleed out too much (it happened to me with water right out of the kettle). So the second time I used only cold water and the colours look perfect.
Have fun dying your own threads! You will be soooo happy when you see the results! 🎉 😍
Thinking about trying this with all-natural dye (made from fruits/veggies/spices). A tutorial I found for making dye mentioned using a "mordant". Is that what the soda ash is in this tutorial? They listed some examples but soda ash wasn't on there so I wanted to check. Tia!
@cocoboba You can buy it on Amazon, but you can actually make your own soda ash. 🙂
Homemade soda ash: 1. Pour baking soda into a cookie sheet. Spread it out to form a layer. 2. Bake the soda at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes to 1 hour. The time isn’t critical. You can’t ‘overcook’ the soda, but you want to be sure to drive off all the water. You should also stir it up occasionally, just so that it bakes more evenly. 3. Remove the pan from heat, allow it to cool, and store it in a sealed container to keep it from picking up moisture from the air.
