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You are here: Home > All About Hand Dyeing > FAQ > auxilliary chemicals > dye thickeners

You can buy Jacquard sodium alginate from Amazon

Use alcohol to prevent clumping of alginate

guar gum can be used to thicken caustic paste for devoré

Procion MX dyes are among the very best for dyeing cotton and rayon.

Sodium alginate, Superclear, and other dye thickeners

Thickeners can be added to dye to give it a good consistency for painting. They are also popular in tie-dyeing for improving the crispness of a design. The use of a thickener may also increase the brightness of colors by aiding in holding the dye in the fabric for the dye reaction to occur.

Types of thickeners
Alginate
     How to dissolve alginate
     Avoiding alginate gel
     Viscosity
     Recipes
Superclear
Monagum
Other polysaccharides: Starch, Methyl Cellulose, Guar gum
Print Paste

Types of thickeners

Different thickeners used in dyeing and discharge include sodium alginate, Superclear, monagum, and other polysaccharides.

Alginate

Sodium alginate is the most popular of the dye thickeners and may be purchased from any good dye supplier by mail order; see Sources for Dyeing Supplies for a list of different dye supply companies. Alginate is extracted from brown algae, a type of seaweed. Different lots of sodium alginate will be more or less thick than previous lots, so you must experiment to see how much you need to use.

How to dissolve alginate

Alginate tends to clump horribly when water is added. There are two different answers to this problem. One is to mix the alginate the day before use, using a kitchen blender.

The other answer to the problem of dissolving alginate is to mix the alginate with either alcohol or corn oil before adding the water, so that the particles will be separate and not stick together when water hits them. An added advantage to the use of alcohol or vegetable oil is that the solutions are said to stay good much longer than those prepared with water alone.

The alcohol you use to mix your alginate with before adding water can be denatured alcohol, also known as methylated spirits, or it can be isopropyl alcohol, also known as rubbing alcohol. Corn oil has also been used successfully for this purpose; any refined, tasteless vegetable oil should work as well. The goal is just to separate the particles of the alginate before adding any water.

Avoiding alginate gel

Another problem with alginate is that a dye solution made using it, or a stock solution of alginate, may sometimes form a semisolid gel, which is undesirable and difficult to get out of dye bottles. Unlike gelatin or agar, alginate gels do not melt when heated. The gel is caused by the presence of calcium ions, which are common in water and may be contaminants in other ingredients.

Sodium Hexametaphosphate from Jacquard is still called Calgon The answer is to use soft or distilled water or to include the water softener known as metaphos (sodium hexametaphosphate) in your mixture. Use 1 teaspoon (5 ml, or 7 grams) of of metaphos per quart (or liter) of water. Calgon brand laundry water softener may be substituted only if it is not phosphate-free; the old form of Calgon, also known as Calgon T, was sodium hexametaphosphate, which is ideal, but the phosphate-free version of Calgon, containing polycarboxylate, should not be used in dyeing. Jacquard's Calgon, Dharma's Water Softener, and ProChem's Metaphos are all fine.

High viscosity versus low viscosity

Typically two different grades of alginate are used for dyeing. The low viscosity/high solids form is preferred for fine details on silk or wool, while the high viscosity/low solids form is preferred for cotton; the latter may also be used on silk when fine detail is not needed.

recipes for fiber reactive dye with alginate

This is Michael Fowler's recipe for tie-dyeing [from a post on the old Fiber-Arts Forum]....

"I use a bank of four principle blenders and add:
Day/Night before dyeing, I mix my chemical water:

4 Cups Water
1/4 Cup [60 ml] Urea (Jacquard or PRO Chem.)
2 tsp. [10 ml] Alginate or Thick SH

Then, prior to dyeing, add dye powder and soda ash:

4 TBS. [60 ml] MX dye powder (Jacquard or PRO Chem.)
2 tsp. [10 ml] Soda Ash (Jacquard or PRO Chem.)

To mix the chemical water, I fill 4 cups [1 liter] water, add Urea and then the thickener. I generally would store a quantity of thickener in a 5-gallon bucket or glass mason style jars. Then the chemical water is measured back into the blender for use and I add my dye powder and dye fixative."

Here's a recipe for using alcohol to prepare alginate....

Dissolve

1/2 cup (125 ml) urea
1 teaspoon (5 ml) sodium hexametaphosphate

2 cups (500 ml) hot water.

Stir together:

2-6 tablespoons (30 to 90 ml) sodium alginate (depending on thickness desired, and on variations in sodium alginate supply)
1/4 cup 90% rubbing alcohol

Add the alginate in alcohol to the urea water, and add additional water to make a total of 4 cups (1 quart). Mixture may be stored in refrigerator if it is allowed to return to room temperature before use.

Superclear

There appear to be two different though similar products sold under the name of Superclear. Their advantage is that, as they are already liquid, there is none of the inconvenience that is found in dissolving alginate. They also lack the distressing tendency of alginate to gel in the presence of calcium ions. (However, alcohol helps with the dissolving problem, and metaphos helps with the calcium problem.) The disadvantage of Superclear is that it is more expensive and costs more to ship, as well.

Jacquard describes their Superclear as

"...a thick brownish liquid derived from natural gum tannins which does not alter the dye since it rinses away in the final wash. Use 5 tablespoons of Superclear per 8 oz. dye to reduce spreading. To stop spreading, add dye powder to a solution of 2/3 Superclear, 1/3 water."

Dharma Trading Company sells many Jacquard products, but the Superclear they sell is different in that it is colorless rather than brownish. Their description:

"320-N is a synthetic replacement for 80-N. You will have to adjust the following formulas to your situation. To reduce spreading - add 4 or more tablespoons to 8 oz. of concentrated dye solution. To stop spreading - add the dye powder to a mix of 2/3 or more Superclear and 1/3 water."

It looks as though Dharma's Superclear is less expensive than the Jacquard Superclear.

Monagum

Monagum is, according to PRO Chemical & Dye, a modified starch gum that is the only thickener for discharge printing with hypochlorite ("chlorine") bleach that stays thick, rather than breaking down and becoming thin quite soon after mixing with the bleach. We do not use it to thicken reactive dyes.

Starch is not used

Starch, a polysaccharide which is used as a thickener in foods, is not used with reactive dyes. This is because the starch will itself react with the dye, resulting in lower color yields; dyed starch may also loosely bind to the fiber, washing out only gradually over the course of many washings and making it appear as though the dyed fabric is not washfast. In theory, starch could be used with acid dyes, but I have never seen this recommended.

Methyl Cellulose

Methyl cellulose is a thickener commonly used for marbling. The water is thickened with methyl cellulose so that it will support fabric paint which is floated on top of it.

Methyl cellulose can also be used to make print paste for acid dyes. You might be able to find it in a specialty wallpaper shop under the name of 'cellulose adhesive.'

Guar gum

Guar gum is another thickener that is commonly used (in more purified form) in foods. It is used to thicken the caustic paste used to make devoré patterns on mixed fibers. It is not used with fiber reactive dyes such as Procion MX because it reacts with them, competing with the fiber that is being dyed, but it is used to thicken vat dyes and acid dyes. See ProChem's recipe for Colored Discharge Printing using PRO Vat Dyes. Guar gum is superior to alginate in thickening Lanaset dyes.

Print Paste

PRO Chemical & Dye sells two convenient sodium alginate mixtures, PRO Print Paste Mix F and PRO Print Paste Mix SH. Pro Print Paste F (for silk) contains urea, low viscosity alginate and metaphos, while Pro Print Paste SH (for cotton) contains urea, high viscosity alginate and metaphos.