Have you ever used or heard from anyone who has used the Generation Green Colourants?

Name: Linden

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Message: I was just wondering if you had ever used or heard from anyone who has used the Generation Green Colourants?

I've never dyed anything before and these sound perfect for what I'm after - something for dyeing small amounts of fabric, like rib trims and dyeing over old t-shirts. I'm impressed by the eco claims too.

Do you think these are worth investing in? Do you think they will perform as well as they claim or should I just jump in with one of the fibre reactive dyes you reccomend?

I think it's the idea I can do all the dyeing in a ziploc that swayed me, that and the price.

Would appreciate your advice.

This is the first I've heard of the Earth Safe Finishes coloring system. It does not include any dye; instead, it contains pigments, which must first be mixed with a fabric medium to enable them to color fabric. This means that they are fabric paints, not dyes.

Dyeing in a zip-top freezer bag with fiber reactive dyes (such as Procion MX dye or Remazol dye) is very popular and easy, so don't think you have to buy into this system to use that technique.

I think the price claims on the Generation Green fabric paints are exaggerated. They say you can make 12 gallons of "dye" (note: it's not really dye!) for as little as two cents an ounce, which sounds cheap, but you'd have to buy many more bottles of the FabricMagic to mix up that much fabric color. Their recipe calls for four parts of water to one part FabricMagic (the thin colorless acrylic fabric paint binder) plus "several drops" of Colorant pigments. Each $30 kit contains a 4 ounce bottle of FabricMagic, which will make up to twenty ounces (600 ml) of the mixture, for $29.95. Additional bottles of FabricMagic cost $5.99. You can't use the Generation Green pigments without FabricMagic or another binder to glue the tiny particles of pigment to the fabric, because they are not true dyes and will not stick to the fabric without it.

It's hard to know how much of this "dye" mixture (actually a thin fabric paint) is needed per pound of fiber to be dyed. If you're not concerned with getting a solid single color, you might be able to color one t-shirt, or one yard of fabric, in as little as two cups of this mixture, so perhaps you could do up to eight t-shirts with one 4-ounce bottle of FabricMagic, though a solid color would require considerably more volume to get the color smooth.

For comparison, a two-ounce jar of Procion MX dye powder costs as little as $4 (depending on your supplier) and will make about twelve cups of dye concentrate for tie-dyeing; for solid-color immersion dyeing, a two-ounce jar of Procion dye powder is enough for eight pounds of fabric, or sixteen adult t-shirts. The soda ash required to fix the Procion MX dye is very cheap; it costs about twenty cents for enough to fix the dye on one whole pound of fabric.

So, Generation Green is not nearly as cheap as fiber reactive dye. It might well be worth what it costs if you like it, though. (It may be more cost-effective than other brands of fabric paint, which are sold with the binder pre-mixed with the pigment.)

What are the other pros and cons of pigments, as opposed to dyes?

Wear: The Generation Green system, like all fabric paints, is more susceptible to wear than true dyes, because the particles are essentially glued to the outside of the fibers in your fabric, rather than being chemically attached to the insides of the fibers, as dye molecules are. When the outside of the fiber wears off, the color is gone, much more quickly than when a true dye is used to color each fiber both inside and out. The faster wearing off can be a good thing, when the appearance of wear is desired. Pigment dyeing is often used for clothing when a look of instant age is desired. You should consider whether this effect will add to or detract from your work.

Smooth even color: fabric paints do not, as a rule, give as perfectly smooth a color as fabric dyes can. As the binder dries, pigment particles tend to migrate into the wetter parts of the fabric, resulting in inconsistent color. In addition, as with dyes, in order to get the smoothest overall color, you must use a large amount of water in which to suspend the pigment particles, and you must use continuous agitation. Neither a large volume nor constant agitation are included in the methods listed among Generation Green instructions, so perfectly solid colors are unlikely. However, you might not care about getting a smooth solid color. Don't think that that means you must use a pigment system, though, since the dye technique known as Low Water Immersion (LWI) dyeing is a good method for using true dyes to produce a variegated appearance.

Color mixing: often people complain that it's harder for them to mix colors with fabric paints than with true dyes. Procion MX dyes are available in a hundred different pre-mixed colors, in addition to the dozen or so pure mixing primaries, some of which are so close to the printers' primaries of cyan, magenta, yellow and black that they can be used to produce any color imaginable. The Generation Green pigments are available in a range of twenty-five colors, more than in than some lines of true dye, though there is only one blue. The lack of other blue hues is a serious issue. The colors available in the four-color ESF FabricMagic Starter kit appear to be a royal blue, a true red, a yellow, and black; unfortunately, royal blue and true red will not produce as wide a range of colors when mixed as would a system that contains turquoise and magenta, instead.

Convenience: for dyeing very small bits of trim, and for fabrics of unknown fiber content, fabric paints can be more convenient than true dyes. Instead of allowing the dye to react with the fiber, you let the Generation Green pigment/FabricMagic system to dry, and then you heat-fix the acrylic binder in the FabricMagic with a hot iron, which can be less trouble for small pieces. For larger pieces, heat-setting can end up being more trouble than proper dye usage, though. The liquid form in which the pigments and the FabricMagic binder are provided is certainly a convenience. Most fiber reactive dyes are available in powdered form only, which in the case of Procion MX dyes must be mixed up fresh every week or two (though some successfully use refrigeration to keep mixed Procion MX dye fresh enough to use for weeks or months); Remazol fiber reactive dyes can be purchased in a convenient long-lasting liquid form and are midway in price between Procion dyes and the Generation Green FabricMagic system, but they are difficult or impossible to find in the UK. Earth Safe Finishes does not appear to specify whether or not their FabricMagic binder works on synthetic fibers; some brands of fabric paints do not, although some other brands of fabric paints do. If FabricMagic works on synthetic fibers, then it will be particularly convenient for polyester blends, as an alternative to the bother of boiling fabric in disperse dye.

Eco-safe claims: I am not at all impressed by claims that fabric paints and pigments are necessarily safer or more environmentally sound than true dyes. They do have a real advantage when you are under drought conditions, because there is much less washing necessary after coloring with fabric paints than after applying dyes; it is always necessary to wash out excess unattached dye after dyeing, which can use a fair amount of water, but that's usually not much of a consideration for home dyeing. When dyeing solid colors with large amounts of water in huge dyebaths, the amount of salt that is needed is considerable and can be a serious ecological problem; however, many of the methods we use for home dyeing do not require salt, and the quantities of salt required for home dyeing with even the most salt-intensive methods are insignificant due to the small volumes being used. Some pigments are safer than some dyes, but you must check for outside certification by an independent test company for each pigment color in order to be sure of this. Many of the pigments are extremely close in chemical structure to some of the chromophores in the dyes we use, so there's probably not that much difference, as long as none of the pigments are based on heavy metals such as cadmium or chromium (long popular in traditional artists' pigments), and as long as none of the pigments or dyes are based on the dangerous dye intermediates benzidine, o-dianisidine, and o-tolidine (which have been mostly phased out among home-use dyes, and which the makers of the Earth Safe Finishes products have most likely excluded).

In conclusion, if you are planning on dyeing natural fibers, such as overdyeing cotton t-shirts, I recommend that you use fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dye powder or Remazol liquid dyes (also known as vinyl sulfone dyes), instead, as they are less expensive, produce longer-lasting results, and are more versatile. If you have small items of uncertain fiber content, I do recommend a fabric paint, such as Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow, Dharma Pigment Dyes, or possibly the Generation Green pigments with the FabricMagic binder. Since I have not tried the Generation Green system, and have not read any reviews by anyone outside the Earth Safe Finishes company, I can't be sure whether or not it is as good as other brands of fabric paints. It would be wise to purchase the smallest kit available and do tests to see how well it works for you, before making any significant investment in them. Of course, this is good advice whenever you use any new materials.

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Posted: Saturday - December 17, 2011 at 03:45 PM

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Have you ever used or heard from anyone who has used the Generation Green Colourants?

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