Name: David
Message: I soaked my Dharma PFD fabric in soda ash at room temperature. I mixed 1.5 ounces of #44 Better Black with 2 cups of water and 1/2 tablespoon of urea. I wrang out the fabric, poured the black directly on the cloth, stored overnight in closed container. I only got a medium-deep shade of purple. Any ideas what I should look at first?

The first thing you should do is call Dharma Trading Company. They are the ones who profited from your spending the money on their fabric and their dye; therefore, it is only right that they should be the ones who spend the money on providing you with technical support.

However, I went ahead anyway, and asked the obvious question: How much did the fabric weigh, approximately? The answer was,

I used direct application to 1 yard of fabric, then let it sit in the die overnight.

This still doesn't say much about how much weight of fabric you used. The weight of fabric is critical in determining how much dye is required. Many times more dye is required for a yard of heavy cotton fleece than for a yard of thin cotton lawn, for example. You must know the weight of your fabric in order to know how much dye to use.

Almost all black dye mixtures will produce a shade other than neutral grey when diluted too much. (I know of one rare exception to this among the Procion MX type dyes, but it too produces colors when used in LWI.) If you wish to obtain a true black, you must use more dye. In addition, if you wish to obtain a single smooth shade, you must use a higher ratio of water to weight of fabric than if you are pleased with the mottled effects produced by a low water ratio, as in low water immersion dyeing.

Dharma's web site has a table giving the amounts of dye needed to dye a given weight of fiber, for each of their dyes. It indicates that 36 grams of their 'Better Black' mixture is capable of dyeing up to one pound of cotton fiber. A different quantity will be required for dyeing silk; unfortunately, you did not indicate what fiber you were dyeing. Each dye performs differently on every different fiber.

If you used a large enough quantity of dye per pound of your fabric, as per the recommendations of your dye supplier, then the question will be, what went wrong? Since you appear to have a northern-hemisphere e-mail address, it's probably not the common problem of too cool a reaction temperature, given that you are writing in what is the summertime here, though air conditioning can cause problems. It could be that the dye is old, or has been stored under warm conditions or not sealed tightly enough, and has gone bad. It could be that you'd do better if you added salt. It could be that you failed to use enough soda ash. In fact, you don't mention soda ash anywhere in your message. Could it be that you omitted the dye fixative? Soda ash, also known as sodium carbonate, is absolutely essential for dyeing cotton with Procion MX type dyes.

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