Name: Joyce

Message: Hello Paula, I am looking for a book or a site that will tell me how to achieve a rainbow of fiber reactive colors...otherwords...a mixing guide that would direct me to add one tsp. of one color to two tsp. of another color and the result will be 'this' color.  Fiber reactive powder is expensive to be mixing and making huge mistakes.  I am not good at the mixing part of dying...I have been trying for months to get a certain blue that has eluded me...I need help.  Thanks  Joyce

Can you describe the blue you are looking for? Sometimes talking about it with another dyer produces the breakthrough needed.

There is a book which I think you should read, called Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green. Although it is oriented toward oil painting, it will teach you a lot about the theory of color mixing, which is extremely helpful. It's not perfect, but it's close enough for now, the best start I've seen.

For mixing Procion MX dyes, I recommend that you purchase five or ten specific unmixed single-hue dyes. It is difficult to learn what you are doing when you use premixed dyes, mixed from several different dye colors before you ever get them, as your mixing primaries. I have specific recommendations, but the names of these dyes vary from one dye retailer to another. To see how your retailer's dye names correspond to the generic names, see this table in the FAQ on my web site: "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?". The colors that you most need to buy are as follows:

1. yellow MX-8G (or yellow MX-6G)
2. red MX-5B (or red MX-8B): this is very close to printer's magenta, needed for mixing
3. turquoise MX-G: this is very close to printer's cyan, needed for mixing
4. blue MX-2G (a dark navy blue): the darkness helps you to mix deeper, richer colors
5. a black mixture such as black MX-CWNA

I also recommend that you get the following, when possible:

1. blue MX-R (a medium blue)
2. orange MX-2R (you can use this to mix a true red)
3. one of the golden yellows: yellow MX-GR or yellow MX-3R or yellow MX-3RA
4. violet MX-2R (often mislabeled by the seller as violet MX-G): a purple that will not break up
5. blue MX-G: cerulean blue, a lovely slightly greenish blue

Premixed colors can be fun to use, especially when they come in just the color you need, but they are not as useful as the pure unmixed colors, since they are not very good for mixing together. Premixed colors usually yield duller results when mixed together, and can yield unexpected colors when mixed. It is more economical to focus on the unmixed colors.

Speaking of economy, if this is an issue for you, you MUST find a supplier that will sell you the dye in jars of two ounces or more. The tiny jars that contain less than two ounces are not nearly as good a deal. If your supplier sells only smaller jars, get a new supplier. See the listing of Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World, on my website.

The best way to really learn about color mixing is to do a simple series of combining each of your mixing primaries together, and using them to dye small swatches of cloth. If you do this and save and label each of your results, your resulting notebook will be a gem, extremely useful in all future work. 

The dream way of doing this would be to take one of the excellent workshops on 'Color Mixing for Dyers' that are taught by Carol Soderland, in which each student generates a huge set of dye color samples. The problem is whether you are located near one of her workshops: this year, it looks like she's giving them in Ohio, Massachusetts, Washington State, Idaho, and New York. See her workshop schedule.

Of course, it is not necessary to take a class in order to learn to mix colors. Trial and error will serve you very well, as long as you keep careful records. One excellent book that, among other things, shows a bit about how to make tests of mixing colors together is Elin Noble's Dyes & Paints: A Hands-On Guide to Coloring Fabric. Or, you could start a discussion about how to do this on the Dye Forum.

There are three different charts which you can use to translate color names to amounts of dye to use. Here is a link to the Jacquard Products table for mixing Procion MX dye colors, which I've improved by adding generic names.

Here is a link to a page with my English translations of the color mixing charts at Dreamline, in the Netherlands. It has the advantage of showing the colors that result, but the disadvantage of using some less commonly available Procion MX dyes, which are rubine MX-B and navy blue MX-3R. It should serve to give you ideas, at least. It is based on the weights of the dyes, which are more reliable than the volume, which may change for a given amount of dye, from one jar to the next.

Here is a link to a Dye Forum posting with the color mixing chart from Maiwa Handprints.

Finally, you MUST look at the most wonderful way to play with color mixing online, Olli Niemitalo's Dye Mixer Applet. There is a description of how to use it on the Dye Forum. Even if you don't do the experiments needed to translate the numbers directly to how much of each of your dyes to use, it is wonderfully helpful to be able to quickly visualize what different colors you can get by combining different amounts of specific dye colors.

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