Removing Dye from Fabric

            One of our more fun projects was when we got to bleach clothes. Everyone in the class had to bring in some kind of black fabric, such as t-shirts, pillow cases, sweatshirts, or anything else.

The process of bleaching works much like the process of tie-dying. You can tie up your fabric with string and make different types of patterns for your clothes. If you do it that way, you would first make sure that your fabric was tied tightly with the string. Then you would dunk the fabric into a bucket of bleach and wait for the color to turn from black to a red or brown color. That will usually take at the most 15 minutes. When the fabric starts to turn colors, take it out and dunk it into vinegar, all that does is to stop the bleaching. You would then take out your fabric, cut off the string, and leave it out to dry.

If you want to work with a heavier kind of fabric, such as sweatshirts (what I did), then you can’t dunk it in a bleach bucket. You would need to make a design out of tape on your fabric. My design was a smiley face on the front and on the back a saying I made up, “Smiles Are Optional.” I choose that saying because not everyone needs to look or be happy all the time, and sometimes it’s necessary for a person to feel sad or angry or any other emotion in order to function properly. Anyways, back to bleaching. After you have made your design, you take a spray bottle full of bleach and spray it on your fabric. This could take a while, with you having to constantly go back to keep bleaching, but it will get the job done. When everything is bleached, you take off your tape and leave it out to dry.

 Both methods require that you wash your fabric by itself as soon as it is dry. Washing it will help to stop the bleaching and will get rid of the very strong bleach smell. You must wash it by itself, unless you want any other clothes to get ruined.