HELP! Can I tie dye in my washing machine?

[Swizzlefizzle]

I really need some urgent advice on tie dying! I remember tie dying stuff fairly easily in the past but it was only ever the odd t-shirt in a bucket of hand dye.

But I now need to tie dye a large quantity of items and I have lots of packs of dylon machine dye. However, it doesn't seem as if you are meant to tie dye in a front loading washing machine.

If I were to band the fabric really tightly (with elastic bands and parcel string) will it be enough to keep the dye out of those areas in the 40° cotton wash advised by Dylon?

Alternatively, I could use a gentle wash instead. However, would this cause the colour not to take well?

Finally, could I use the machine dye in a bucket instead? If so, how much water should I use for a 350g pack? Should I add extra salt? Do I need to keep the temperature at 40° for the whole hour or so of dying.

Any advice would be so much appreciated as I'm in a bit of a jam.

Thanks so much.

Can you do a test wash on a gentle cycle? I think you'd want to avoid TOO much agitation in case that worked the dye in under the bands too much. But I'm just guessing.

Thanks Serf. Good idea. At least I can re dye it if doesn't work.