A color catcher is a piece of white something with soda ash solution dried onto. Soda Ash is just plain old washing soda! So easy to make your own. Just put a tablespoon of the dry soda into a cup of hot water until it dissolves. Put in a yard of white junk fabric, or ratty toweling, and let it become saturated. Let it dry. Cut off a piece and wash it with your bleedable fabric. The washing soda grabs and holds the dye. You can make a lifetime supply of color catchers with a few dollars worth of washing soda. For those of you who tie dye, this is exactly the technique for pre-treating fabric before applying dye. Soda plus cotton grabs loose dye molecules.
I will be cutting my fabric up first just to make it easier to dry before use. Or I might just invest in some dollar store white wash clothes that are cut to size already.
Have you tried it? Let me know what you think.
I tried this this afternoon. Used some scrap felt. The felt came out with no color but a ratty towel I threw in came out totally dyed. Shouldn't the felt (with the soda ash) take up the colour?
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