Procion MX Dye

"Senegal" Yasmin Sabur, 2011, resist dyed, block printed, hand painted

I got a question about Procion MX dye from a friend who has never worked with this particular fiber reactive dye.

Not sure if I'm the right person to answer the question. I've been working with Procion since the late 1960s and I'm sure that I no longer follow any of the published directions for using. Would I let that stop me from running my mouth on the subject? No way.

1. The first thing is understanding what fiber reactive means. Procion forms a chemical bond with natural fiber fabrics - cotton, silk, linen, ramie, rayon and wool. In order for the chemical bonding to take place you add fairly ordinary chemicals to develop the color and to facilitate the bond. Plain salt (not iodized), urea, and soda ash.

2. Procion dye for cotton does not require heat. This is one of it's outstanding qualities. So sometimes Procion is referred to as a cold water fiber active dye.

3. Procion may be used in many different dye applications. For years I worked in batik. The fabric after waxing is dyed in a warm water dye bath. Immersed for over an hour, with constant stirring and turning, salt added at the beginning of the dye process and soda ash added after 15 or 20 minutes of stirring. The salt helps to insure even color and the soda ash bonds the molecules of the dye to the fiber. Handpainting, stencilling, block printing, silk screen, shibori require pretty much the same additions but the process of dyeing is different.

4. Colors. So many books and tutorials on color and Procion dye. The politically correct way to explore color with any dye or paint is creating a series of swatches and keeping dye notebooks. (You know that after 40 years of dyeing, I don't do this, but you should.) Dye is not a pigment or a paint. This means you can overdye to create a different color. While it's fun to just play around doing this, if you have a basic understanding of color, it helps. So you should know that there are three primary colors. Red, blue, yellow. (In Procion, these are turquiose, fuschia, and golden yellow, the names depend on the manufacturer, somewhere on each site you should find information on the primary colors, if not see Paula Burch below.) The big three are Dharma Trading Co.,  Jacquard, and Pro Chemical and Dye.) Secondary colors are created by combining or over dyeing two of the three primary colors. So red and yellow = orange, red and blue = purple, yellow and blue = green. Tertiary colors are created from combining all three primary colors. Brown, olive green, rust, gold, maroon, burgundy are all tertiary colors.

Okay, before I write a book, that's enough. But here is the real gift - visit the Paula Birch site http://www.pburch.net/ to learn everything you ever wanted to know about dyeing. Full of tutorials, great info, books to buy, links to tutorials, forums, etc. This wonderful woman has created a site which has been a dyeing resource for years. She does this out of the goodness of her heart. I buy all of my books through this site, because 8% of the proceeds of the sale from Amazon go back to the site. You should buy your books here, too.

Now go and mess up some of your old clothes. Let me know if this was helpful, and if you have questions that you feel I may be able to answer or at least help lead you to an answer, don't hesitate to ask. I'll do my best.