Name: Betsy

Region: midwest US

Message:   I have taken on a fix-it project with the hopes that I can.
    What's been done so far:
      1) 8 yds. of silk/rayon--designs devored onto
      2) Dyed with Procion MX Mist Grey #139--Red Spots(dye not mixed
          well).
      3) Thioxed
      4) Re-dyed with Mist Grey---(dye mixed but  not allowed to sit)
         dye strained (all red strained out, apparently) and the
         result is Ugly green. 
Now, my turn!
      5) Thioxed--the result is a pale yellow.
      6) Sample, sample, sample, sample---How to get grey?
      7) The best so far is 1/4 Eggplant and 3/4 Better Black= sort 
         of a grey with greenish tinge and acceptable to the artist
         but not perfect. Immersion-dyed but also tried chemical 
         water and painted it on with no difference.
QUESTIONS:
  Is Procion MX the best way to go? 
  Should I try Rit, Pro H or? 
  Should I tell them to go with a navy or dark color other than grey?

Procion MX fiber reactive dyes are as good as any, for this project. If you overdye your "grey with greenish tinge" with a light reddish color, it should correct the greenish tinge, unless you overdo it. If what you have now is a pale yellow, then what you want is a mixture of a light purple, to correct the yellow, plus a gray mixture, to make it darker.

Is your goal to have the rayon and the silk fibers in the devoré fabric end up the same color as each other, or different? In many cases people want a contrasting color effect, but it sounds like in this case a single solid color is desired.

For most purposes, I do not generally recommend an all-purpose dye, such as Rit, because the colors are not always predictable, and because the dyes contained in the mix tend to be very poorly washfast. However, the washfastness problem can be solved by using a commercial dye fixative such as Retayne, or by marking the fabric "dry clean only". I prefer to use the fixative, although it tends to reduce lightfastness somewhat. All-purpose dye blends are one way to get a protein fiber, such as silk, and a cellulose fiber, such as rayon, to come out more-or-less the same color.

Actually, direct dyes (the half of the all-purpose blend that colors rayon) and fiber reactive dyes both dye silk as well as rayon. However, for any type of dye, all of the pre-mixed dye colors tend to produce different hues on one fiber than on another. The devoréed sections of the fabric show only the silk backing, while the plush portion of the fiber is composed of rayon. It can be challenging to get an exact match in the two different fibers, unless the color you want exists in a single-hue unmixed dye of any type. For most dyes, there are limitations on available colors, unless you mix two or more of the other colors together. In particular, green, black, and gray colors are relatively rare among the unmixed dyes. There are no available unmixed greens, blacks, or grays among the Procion MX line (see "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?", and there are no unmixed blacks or grays among the Procion H dyes that are available to hand dyers in the US.

Procion H dye is fine, but not better than Procion MX dye; it's harder to get, and, since it's a hot-water dye, the requirement for steaming makes it more trouble to use. The Remazol dye line sold by PRO Chemical & Dye does include a single-hue black, which is kind of blueish, but the Jacquard Vinyl Sulfone dyes substitute a mixture for their black dye of the same class. You can also get this dye from Joann's fabric stores in the form of Dylon Permanent Black.

Most retailers who sell Procion MX dyes do not include any premixed Procion MX dyes that are standardized in order to produce the desired color on silk. There is, in fact, only one premixed Procion MX type dye anywhere that is designed for use on silk. All of the premixed Procion MX colors will work well on silk, but the color you get may be quite different from the expected color. The premixed colors can produce wonderful contrasting colors on silk/rayon devoré. The single-hue, unmixed Procion MX dyes produce pretty much the same color on any fiber, though sometimes a little lighter or darker. There is one premixed color of Procion MX dyes that is standardized for use on silk, rather than on cotton, the PRO MX Silk Black 610 from PRO Chemical & Dye, but it should produce an off color when used on rayon, which is more like cotton. I would recommend it if you were dyeing only silk, but not for dyeing silk/rayon devoré a single color.

What I would do in your situation, if trying to get a single color on the "grey with greenish tinge" piece, is try dyeing the piece a light or medium pink, to cover up the greenish tinge, using a single-hue Procion MX dye, either red MX-5B, red MX-8B, or rubine MX-B. If that doesn't work or if it seems like too much trouble (after having spent so much time on it already!), I'd use a single-hue Procion MX navy blue dye, not a mixture such as Strong Navy or Navy Blue MX-4RD, which would tend to look different on silk than on rayon, but instead either blue MX-2G (sold by anyone who sells Procion dyes) or blue MX-4GD (sold by ProChem). Use "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?" as a guide in selecting single-hue dyes, which will behave more predictably on different fibers than the premixed colors will. I also have Remazol reactive black 5 on hand, sold by Pro-Chem as Liquid Reactive Black, so I might use that, instead.

If the piece is still yellow — I guess you only did the eggplant/Better Black on a test piece, which is wise — I'd try a test with one of the single-hue navies, or the Remazol black. The result will probably be a bit greenish, depending on the shade of yellow you have now, in which case I'd try a bit of red to correct it.

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