Pulling my hair out trying to figure out the best way to achieve a super rich blue

Name: Kyle

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Country or region: United States

Message: Hi Paula. I've read through all your material and examples (extremely helpful btw:) before asking you this question, but I am still pulling my hair out trying to figure out the best way to achieve a super rich blue as shown on your Intense Blue Liquid Dyed Rayon shirt. I've been using procion powder dye, but none of the results are as rich. Is liquid Intense Blue what I should try using instead ? I am dying 100% cotton corduroy hoping to achieve results similar to the [picture shown at the left]. Thanks so much for your help. -Kyle

Procion MX dyes can produce colors that are as rich and deep as those from the Remazol-type Liquid Reactive Dyes in the example you're looking at on my site. I like both of these types of dyes. There are other factors that you should work on for getting the maximum richness.

Unfortunately, my first suggestion is helpful only when you haven't already chosen your fabric: get either rayon or mercerized cotton to dye. Unmercerized cotton, that is, most cotton that you can find, has tiny fuzzy tendrils on the surface of each fiber that diffuse light and make the color appear to be lighter. Mercerized cotton has been treated with lye, while being stretched, to remove this fuzziness so that dye colors appear to be more intense. Rayon is chemically reprocessed cellulose; its treatment has a similar effect to mercerization, so rayon dyes very much like mercerized cotton, yielding brighter colors than most cottons. Bamboo fabric is usually rayon, so it usually dyes very well, too. I don't think I've seen mercerized or rayon corduroy, unfortunately. Cotton velveteen might produce a richer color than cotton corduroy will, depending on the individual fabric.

There are other things you can try, too. Something that really helps is to dye your fabric or clothing multiple times. Go ahead and dye as usual, wash out and dry, then repeat the same dyeing process, with the same color(s). Minor shifts in the orientation of the fibers within the yarns in the fabric cause new dye sites to open up, making it possible to add more dye.

Even in the first round of dyeing, there are ways to improve your color intensity. Avoid permanent-press or wrinkle-resistant clothing, because the invisible finishes on the fabric can prevent the dye from fully accessing the fabric. Prewash in the hottest water your garment can tolerate, ideally 140°F, using Synthrapol or another detergent, plus soda ash for extra cleaning power (this is completely separate from the soda ash you use to fix the dye); this will help to remove any other finishes that can be removed.

Try to get everything else perfect: use the right amount of soda ash as instructed by a reliable recipe, make sure your dye reaction is allowed to occur in a warm place, and, if your dye method lends itself to this, leave the dye on the fabric overnight. (Don't leave the dye on overnight if you're immersion dyeing for a perfectly smooth solid color, because it's not worth stirring it that long, and you must stir throughout the dyeing process for a perfect solid color. Most of the dye color bonds in the first hour, anyway, depending on how warm the room and your water are.) If your house is a little cool, find a way to warm your dye reaction temperature to at least 70°F, but preferably higher: scroll down to "Ways to increase your reaction temperature" on my page "What is the effect of temperature on fiber reactive dyes?".

Use plenty of dye. Your dyed fabric should look too dark before you wash out the excess dye. See my page, "How much Procion MX dye should I use?". You can use up to 10% OWG on cotton fabric: for a one-pound pair of corduroys (weigh them while they are dry), that would be an astonishing 45 grams of dye powder. There will be some wasted dye that goes down the drain, but that's inevitable.

Be sure you're not using more water than you need, following a reliable recipe. For a perfectly smooth solid color, using high water ratio immersion dyeing in a large bucket or the washing machine, you will want twenty or twenty-five times as much water as fabric, by weight, but for low water immersion dyeing you should dissolve the dye in barely enough water to cover the fabric. If you're using a high volume of water, you will need to use a large quantity of salt in order to help drive the dye from solution onto the fabric, but this is not an issue for low water immersion dyeing, with only small amounts of water.

Color choice is also very important. You will get a brighter color using Procion Blue MX-G (cerulean blue) than you will with Procion Blue MX-R (sky blue or basic blue), because the latter color does not absorb as narrow a band of the visible spectrum; it's really more of a navy blue. There is no Procion MX blue dye that is exactly the same bright medium blue color as the Remazol Intense Blue, known generically as Colour Index Reactive Blue 19; all of the Procion blues are either slightly more greenish in hue, or darker, duller blues, though you can buy a good bright blue mixture from an online dye retailer. If the color must be a medium blue hue, instead of slightly shifted to green as the cerulean blue is, you can adjust it yourself by adding a little Procion Red MX-8B (fuchsia), or buy a bright blue mixture with an encouraging name like ProChem's "brightest blue" or Dharma's "electric blue". Cerulean blue (blue MX-G), turquoise (turquoise MX-G), and fuchsia (red MX-8B) are three of the clearest and brightest of the pure unmixed colors in the Procion MX line of dyes.

It's essential to start with the brightest white fabric you can, before dyeing. A "natural" cotton color fabric, which is slightly yellowish, will never produce as bright and clear a blue as a bleached white cotton that is very colorless to start with.

One last possibility to consider is that sometimes the color in a photo you want to copy may have been manipulated on a computer by increasing the color saturation in the photo. Sometimes this kind of manipulation is necessary in order to make a photo give as close an effect as possible to what you see when an item is in very bright sunlight; other times, its use may exaggerate the color. Just something to consider when looking at the intensity of color in a photograph. A color will look brighter when viewed in sunlight than it will in most indoor light.

Summing up: to get the most brilliant blue possible, use mercerized cotton or rayon, use a lot of dye, use a warm room, choose a very clear bright dye color, and dye your fabric more than once. When one of these is not an option, try to do everything else you can, in order to get the brightest color possible.

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Posted: Wednesday - March 21, 2012 at 09:44 AM

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Pulling my hair out trying to figure out the best way to achieve a super rich blue

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