community of dyers

For a long time, it has been impossible to buy Inkodye anywhere but from Dharma Trading Company. Not that there's anything wrong with Dharma, as a source.

Now the Inkodye company has set up a website to sell directly, which includes more information on their products. The prices are exactly the same as at Dharma, though with a price break for kits, and maybe a special on shipping sometimes.

What's worth looking at on the Inkodye website are the FAQs and tutorials. Here are some of the FAQs, from the Inkdye FAQ page:

That last claim is, of course, worthless, unless and until we see the certification. Many art supplies are labeled by manufacturers as "non toxic" when they truly do not deserve the label. I'm not implying that there's anything particularly hazardous about Inkodyes, just pointing that claims of non-toxicity are entirely worthless when you're not shown the certification as proof. In this case, they don't even name the company that they say did the certification! They will need to do that.

There is an Instructions page, and there are tutorials for two projects, a sun-printed batik scarf and a project involving dyeing some parts of a used denim jacket. No real reason to do the latter instead of using Procion dyes, unless the Inkodyes provide greater lightfastness (as vat dyes often do, but we need to request info from the manufacturer to be sure). The batik sunprinting project doesn't really call for sunprinting at all, but it's a nice demo of the basic method for batik.

I'd like to see a similar tutorial that really exploits the special sunprinting properties of Inkodyes.

For more information about Inkodyes, see my February blog entry on "Problems in washing out Inkodye light-activated dye", and my web page "How to Dye and Paint Fabric with Light".

Thanks to Jessica the Crafter for letting me know about the new site!

-Paula