Name: David
Message: Hello!
We are making sheets and comforters for [a major American retailer] in Pakistan. Their specification calls for reactive prints on 60% cotton / 40% polyester percale. The printers are telling us that it is impossible to print reactive on fabric that has any quantity of polyester and they will have to use pigment dyes. Is this correct?


Yes, it is. Polyester will not accept reactive dyes. Reactive dyes printed onto a 60% cotton fabric will be only 60% as bright or as dark as the same dyes printed onto 100% cotton. In addition, cotton will not accept the disperse dyes that will work on polyester. The only choice that will work on cotton and polyester simultaneously would be pigment dyes. Since these are not true dyes, but instead a type of fabric paint, which means that pigment is held to the fiber by a binder, they are much less particular about what fiber they are used upon.

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