One year while vacationing in Florida at the beach I did see four women who had on lovely brightly printed loose fitting dresses walk into the ocean, immerse their outfits, and then coolly walk out and away......saltwater theory I guess....interesting sight to see!

Thanks for posting this very interesting subject. So many things that our Grandma taught us are still quite useful today. I lived near the ocean for half of my life and never saw anyone take a quilt into the Pacific Ocean!! I have seen other things done on the beach that are not mentionable on this site !!!

This is a bit off the subject, but saw on pinterest that Dawn dish soap can be used to set color. I'm going to try with some scraps. It seems that Dawn can be used for just about anything.

Amazing, if you have the ocean nearby why not? What a great idea, I have heard of setting colors with salt water.

DMC red embroidery floss had a bleeding problem - we soaked it in cold water with salt and vinegar.

Soaking in salt water is what we always did for new blue jeans to set the dye.

Dawn acts like Synthrapol to suspend unset dye particles in water so they can be rinsed away (instead of settling as a bleed into other fabrics). This is not the same as setting color. Retayne is what home dyers use to set color; Dawn is not a substitute for Retayne.

I soak new colored or screened T-Shirts for 3 days in Kosher Salt water, it makes the fabric so soft & it stays soft too.

Thanks for all the input. I think I may have to try this out this weekend. I'll let you know how it turns out.

The instructions say to use one package of dye, twenty cups of salt for every pound of fabric to dye in a washer. Did I read that right?

I had to go back and read it again. Yes Twenty cups of salt for every pound of fabric to be dyed.

This is about dying fabric, not setting the dye in already dyed fabric. But very interesting.

Tewnty cups of salt!!!!
peace