Rinsing, Neutralizing and Washing

Now that your fabrics are perfectly rusted, you need to remove the excess iron oxide and neutralize the rusting action. But just a word, the rusting action never completely stops, but it can be slowed down with neutralizing.

Rinsing

• Fill several buckets with fresh water
• Dunk and swish around several times, removing as much of the rusty particles as possible (save this water for your rusty water solution)
• Move fabric to another bucket of clean water, dunk and swish some more
• Do this several times until the water isn't so brown

  
  

Neutralizing

 

• Move to another bucket and add Dawn dish detergent and approximately 1/2C baking soda to 1 gallon water

• Let sit several hours, occasionally dunking and swishing
  
  

Washing

• Wash on a normal cycle using hot water.

• If the fabric is heavily rusted, do a second rinse, adding a little more baking soda

• Dry in dryer or hang outside to dry

I do a lot of natural rust dyeing and was concerned about damaging my washer or transferring rust to other laundry. So I purchased a second hand washer specifically for washing my dyed and rusted fabrics. Since I do so much, I could easily justify this expense.

If you have a HE washers, so I can't speak to how washing rusted fabrics might affect them.

If you are concerned about washing these fabrics in your washer, you may want purchase a used washer or take the fabrics to a laundry mat.

Pressing

After washing and drying, I like to give everything a good pressing. This is when I evaluate each piece and ask

• Am I happy with it

• Could it use another go round of rusting

• If I wrapped it the first time, but there isn't much texture, would wrapping it again improve it

• If I wrapped it the first time, would a layer rusting improve it

• If I layered it the first time, would a second round of wrapping improve it