community of dyers

for your extended replies Paula. I kinda figured the xanthan might be a no-go, thank goodness I had alginate in my order. Also some softener, although I may speak to a local chemical supply co. about some of this stuff to save on shipping.

I did do a few items last week w/o any softener, and the colors were pretty vivid, I may need to do a little water testing and determine exactly what my water situation is.

Thanx again for your quick help.

can I use xanthan gum as a thickener? I saw some info about not using guar gum because it might interfere with dye attachment, but no reference to xanthan.

I have read that, in the presence of divalent cations, such as the calcium and magnesium in your hard water, xanthan gums tend to form a gel at pHs above 10. We typically use pHs between 10.5 and 11.5 for dyeing with Procion MX dyes (or even higher, by accident). I say don't use it, except for special cases when a gel might be desirable, such as in experimenting with it as an alternative water-based dye resist. If you use soft water, then xanthan gum is supposed to be stable enough up to a pH of 13, in which case it ought to work as a thickener. Of course, you have to use softened water with alginate, anyway; even though my water is pretty soft, I've had bottles of alginate-thickened dye turn to gel from what calcium we do have, and it was almost impossible to get out of the bottles. I will never again use alginate without softener! In any case xanthan gum ought to work very well as a thickener for acid dyes, from the sounds of it. Whether it's good for reactive dyes is another question.

The problem with guar gum is that the dyes will react with it, just as they do with cellulose and with starch. That means that you are likely to need to use larger quantities of dye in order to end up with the same color intensity. It's not something I've experimented with, but other dye experts recommend against it.

Xanthan gum is chemically very similar to cellulose, which is the main constituent of cotton, rayon, and most other plant fibers. This means that, indeed, Procion MX dyes will react with the xanthan gum itself. You could try experimenting to see whether your color intensity is much lower with xanthan gum than without, or try using more dye powder. Personally I would rather save the xanthan gum for thickening acid dyes, since there it seems likely to work very well, and stick to using sodium alginate or Superclear to thicken reactive dyes. If you do try using xanthan gums with Procion MX dyes, please let us know how well it works for you!

-Paula

And on another note, if I dilute my dyes down to get a pastel effect, will this increase any odd "halo" colors I may encounter? I seem to have this idea for doing some pastel-y designs....

Dye halo effects, from using color mixtures made from dyes with very different chemical properties, can be avoided by choosing different dye colors to make your mixtures, if you mix your own colors. (Here's a link to a chart showing the reaction rates of some of the Procion MX type dyes.)

For example, turquoise MX-G is a slow-to-react molecule, the slowest of all of the Procion MX dyes. If you mix it with fuchsia (red MX-8B), which is the fastest-to-react of all of the Procion MX dyes, the fuchsia will react immediately wherever you put it, but the turquoise will take its time, during which it will creep and spread along the fabric, resulting in blue halos around purple. If you want purple without halos, it's better to start with violet MX-2R (Dharma and Prochem both sell it as "grape"), and add a little blue or red to it as needed to adjust the hue. Red MX-5B is slower to react than red MX-8B—it takes more than twice as long to react—so substituting it in your mixtures will result in less haloing.

If you are mixing your own orange or true red, you might get yellow halos. Novices commonly make red or orange by mixing red MX-8B (fuchsia) with yellow MX-8G; the color's fine, but you get the exact same problem as with the purple mixture described above. If you want an non-haloing orange, it's best to start with orange MX-2R; if you want a non-haloing true red, the best mixture is orange MX-2R plus red MX-5B.

To find out whether the dye colors you are buying are mixtures or not, look at my charts of Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?. If a color is not listed on the top chart on that page, then it consists of a mixture of two or more different colors. If it's a pure unmixed single-hue color, then no haloing will be possible.

It's a good idea to try the dye mixtures you have, at approximately the dilution you want to try and on similar fabric, to see whether or not the haloing will be a problem. Sometimes haloing will not occur, either because the dyes in the mixture are sufficiently compatible or because the dye reaction occurs quickly, or if you add enough thickener. In other cases the haloing may give a desirable effect. If you don't want to take the time to do a test, it's worth going ahead and trying it, not knowing how significant the haloing might turn out to be. Adding a thickener will reduce haloing.

-Paula

First, when they say you might need to soften your water, does this mean the water you mix your dye/urea with? Or does your rinse/wash water need to be softened. I have uber hard water here, and no softener system. I also make handmade soaps, and have snow water saved in jugs for this, but not enough for washing my items.

It's most important to use the water softener in your dye mixtures, especially if you thicken your dyes with alginate (it forms nasty insoluble gels with calcium), but if your water's very hard, it's helpful to use softened water in the rinsing and washing steps too, especially at first. Sodium hexametaphosphate is cheap and goes a long way. If you don't have any, buy some with your next dye order. Unsoftened water can dull your colors in the dyeing step itself. Not using water softener can also make it very difficult to wash the unwanted excess dye out of your fiber, if your water's hard enough.

Also see: Dyeing with hard water: water softeners, distilled water, and spring water.

-Paula