You know, actually, there is no need to apply vinegar afterwards to your
hot water direct dye, if you are dyeing cotton. It doesn't do anything to set the dye. Vinegar is useful only in dyeing protein fibers, such as wool or silk.
If you are immersion-tie-dyeing, you will need to make your bindings a lot tighter than you have been doing, so that the ties resist the dyebath. Try using some waxed string, instead of rubber bands. Tie very tightly. You can get interesting color effects by binding tightly, simmering (cooking in water at 87°C) in one color of dyebath, rinse in cool water, untie, then retie in a different pattern and repeat the dyeing in another color. If, for example, you use a red dye in the first dyebath and a blue dye in the second dyebath, you will get purple where the two colors overlap, blue where the first set of ties resisted the dye, and red where the second set of ties resisted the dye.
It is possible to use hot water dye for multicolored tie-dyeing, using either of two methods. Here is
a link to instructions for the first method, using the method recommended by the Rit Dye company, in which only part of the tied disk of fabric is immersed in each boiling dyebath. It is a very laborious procedure.
The other method is to apply a concentrated paint, made of your hot-water dye dissolved in a small amount of water, with salt added to the mixture after the dye is dissolved. Saturate the tied fabric with this dye paint, as in the instructions we use for cool water dyes, but then heat-set the dye by wrapping the fabric in plastic wrap (if it is still quite wet) or in paper (if you have allowed the dye to dry in the fabric) and suspending it in a pot above an inch or two of boiling water, so that the water does not contact the fabric, but the steam does. Do this steaming in a covered pot, checking as needed so that the water does not all boil away, for half an hour or longer.
Since these hot water dyes are not very washfast even when properly heat set, be careful to hand wash the garments you have dyed with it, one piece at a time so that running dye from one garment does not ruin another one, and wash only with cool water. Hot water will wash out direct dyes a lot more quickly than cool water will.
You will get better results if you can mail-order some reactive dyes, possibly from another country. Here is a link to my
list of dye suppliers around the world. Tobasign, in Spain, sells
Remazol type reactive dyes internationally; there are other dye companies in Europe that will ship internationally, as well, which sell Procion MX type reactive dyes. There is a special
dye fixative used in the textile indurstry all over the world that can make your hot water dye very reasonably washfast, so that it lasts many washings without the color running or fading, but it can be difficult to find a retail source locally for this product that will sell you only the small quantities you need.
Paula
