Stage Three of Tie-Dye - Know the purpose of the Urea that is mixed with the Dye.

Urea helps to dissolve the dye.

What is the purpose of urea in tie dyeing — Fun Endeavors Tie Dye Lab

Let’s start by finding out what urea is. Just like the name suggests - it is a chemical that can be found in urine, but the kind that we use for tie dye is made from natural gas. You may also recognize urea as a fertilizer.

So, why do we use urea for tie dye? There are a couple of reasons for using urea.

What is urea for, in dyeing? Is it necessary? (pburch.net)

The first thing you may want to know is that erea helps keeps the fabric wet when hot, urea might be helpful because of the humectant properties. Once liquid dye is applied to a shirt, the shirt needs to stay moist until it has had plenty of time to process. If the shirt dries out - the dye will quit reacting with the fabric and the color won’t be as bright and vibrant as possible.

Therefore, you want to keep the fabric damp to keep the dye reacting.

The second reason for using urea, is that it helps to dissolve and get the powdered dye into solution. I’m sure if you’ve been dyeing for awhile you’ve noticed that some colors can be tough to get to dissolve (like yellow that just seems to want to float around on top of the water). Urea will help with that. It will also help when you are trying to mix darker dye colors (the really concentrated ones) that require a lot of dye powder. Getting the dye well dissolved helps to eliminate some of the speckling that can occur on tie dye shirts.

If the dye that is being mixed is not difficult to get into solution, or if it is not super concentrated (where it requires 8 teaspoons of dye per 1 cup of water), usually by adding the dry urea into the mixing container before adding the dye powder and water is good. Then mix the dye, urea and water together at the same time. If it is a difficult color to mix or a concentrated dye, you may want to follow the direction found at the Dharma website will help give you help.

There is companies like Amazon you can get this chemecal but the different websites recommended you can get Urea at the following.

Dharma Trading Company: https://www.dharmatrading.com/chemicals/urea.htm

To use urea in tie-dye, you can follow these simple steps

1. Dissolve 1 cup urea in a gallon of water.
2. Use this urea-water to mix the dye solution: 1/2 cup to 2 teaspoons dye per 1/4 cup of urea-water ( check the instruction on the dye for specifics )
3. The dye dissolves more easily in hot water, so you may prefer to put the dye and a little bit of urea in a container, and add hot water.
4. Stir dye well to dissolve dye powder completely.
5. Make sure that the fabric is completely saturated with the dye mixture.
6. Use lukewarm water when mixing the urea into the dye solution.

Now we ask - Is Urea safe for us?

Urea is reasonably safe, compared to many other chemicals. It's a major ingredient in many skin moisturizers, due to its humectant properties. Although you should avoid skin exposure to dyes or soda ash, skin exposure to urea is not a major safety issue.

It may be irritating to the skin. Airborne urea, like most powders, is hazardous when inhaled.

It also slows the drying process which allows the dyes to produce vivid colors.

Sample of Tie-Dye Fun Endevor - Gorgeous Lightning or Zig Zag Ice Dye (youtube.com)

Please listen to the Video for the needed information for step 3 on worksheet.