community of dyers

If the dyes were labeled Procion MX, I wouldn't worry about them. The only thing that could be wrong with them is that, if they were very old, they might no longer be reactive and would wash out, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The separating colors? That's just the nature of premixed dye colors.

There are only a dozen or so dye colors commercially available in a given line of dyes. All of the fifty or hundred or so colors of Procion MX dyes you can buy (depending on the supplier) are mixed from these dozen or so dyes. For a bright color, you may need only one dye, but to mix a duller color, you need to mix in some of the complementary color, which is on the opposite side of the color wheel. To make a bright red, you need to mix a magenta color of dye with a yellow or orange dye, but to dull that bright red down into a burgundy, you have to add some green. Since there are no pure Procion MX single-color greens, all greens are mixed from blues plus yellows.

If you are dyeing with high-water-ratio immersion dyeing, with a bucket or washing machine and a lot of water, it doesn't matter how the colors might separate out. Constant stirring and a large volume of water ensure that the entire piece ends up the same color all over. But when you do direct dye application, some dye molecules react more quickly with the fabric and stay right where you leave them, while others are a little slower, so they have time to creep along the fabric before they make their final attachment to the fiber. You see this as halos around certain colors in tie-dyeing. In low water immersion dyeing, you can get all sorts of unexpected colors as the result of color separation! A black dye may separate out into brown and rose and blue. That's what makes LWI so much fun.

The craft store dyes, if they are specifically labeled as "Procion MX" dyes, are the ones mixed by the Jacquard Products company. Jacquard Procion MX dyes are just as good as Dharma and ProChem's Procion MX dyes; in fact, the other dye sellers may buy some of their bulk dyes from Jacquard.

Other craft store dyes that are not labeled as "Procion MX" dyes may be entirely different types of dyes. Dylon Cold Water Dyes mostly contain Procion MX dyes, but mixed in colors that make them less suitable for tie-dyeing and dye painting. Dylon Permanent Dyes contain a different type of fiber reactive dyes. Other brands of dye may contain fiber reactive dyes, or they may contain entirely different classes of dye that are suitable only for different things.

To compare the names of Dharma, Jacquard, and ProChem's Procion MX dyes to one another, see the charts on my page, Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?.

All of the premixed Procion MX dyes, regardless of who packaged them, will tend to produce entirely different colors on silk than they do on coton. They work just as well, but the color balance is shifted. Bamboo fiber is really rayon,a cellulose fiber, so the results on bamboo are nearly the same as on cotton. The color names, such as "burgundy", are pretty descriptive for how they look on cellulose fibers such as cotton or bamboo rayon, but they may be completely off on silk, depending on the color. They work very well on silk, but you have to test to see what color you will get, if your project is such that it will make a big difference.

I love to use premixed Procion dye colors for low water immersion dyeing. You never know quite what you'll get, but it's just about always beautiful, and if it's not, you can always overdye it.

If you choose the single-hue unmixed Procion dye colors, they don't separate out, so you can mix them with more confidence that you can predict what will happen, even when dyeing different fibers.

-Paula