Tracking down Procion MX mixing primaries

Name: Mike

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Linda Knutson's
Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers

Country or region: The Netherlands

Message: Hi Paula,

Your website has been a great help for me in my quest to learn about dyeing shammies as are used in diving. I have one question remaining for which I cannot seem to find the answer already at your site. It is about mixing Procion MX dyes. You actually posted a mixing table from a Dutch company, Dreamline (that does not seem to exist anymore), and my question is about the 'second' table. Could you tell me which (preferably Jacquard) color# would be for the Amber, Red Jasper and Azurite as mentioned in this table? The codes as MX-3R, MX-B and MR-3 I can not seem to retrace.

Stof tot verven's procion dye mixing chart 2

Those last two are difficult to track down. In devising Dreamline's mixing chart, the sellers selected six dyes for mixing primaries, but not all of them are equally available everywhere. It looks like at least one of them may have been a mixture of two or more other dyes that you can't buy anywhere else.

(You must, by the way, include a color base name for a code such as "MX-3R" to make any sense. Yellow MX-3R is an entirely different dye from blue MX-3R. The MX codes are meaningful only as a part of a color base name. See my page, "What do the letters and numbers in the code name for a Procion MX type dye mean?", for an explanation.)

The Dreamline color mixing charts, which you saw on the page "English Translations of Dreamline.nl's Textile Painting Recipes", called for six dyes. The same two charts can now be seen in Dutch on the website for the dye retailer Stof tot verven. [Thanks to reader Dinette for alerting me, a week ago, to the Stof tot verven site.] In the first chart, the dyes are yellow MX-8G, red MX-5B, and turquoise MX-G, three of the most popular Procion MX mixing primaries, all easy to find wherever you can buy Procion dyes. In the second chart, the three mixing primaries are yellow MX-3R, red MX-B, and navy MX-3R. The latter two are harder to find. Since you are in the Netherlands, you can simply order them from Stof tot verven. (It appears that Stof tot verven also sells each of the dye mixtures indicated on the charts.) All the same, it is interesting to try to track down the identity of each of these dyes.

The orangish-yellow dye ("Amber") in the second chart, yellow MX-3R, or its equivalent, yellow MX-3RA, which contains the same dye molecule but with different amounts of inactive chemicals, are easy to find: in the US, Dharma carries yellow MX-3R as "deep yellow", ProChem carries yellow MX-3RA as "golden yellow", and Jacquard Products carries yellow MX-3RA as "010 bright golden yellow".

I am not sure of the identity of red MX-B ("Red Jasper"), which does not appear to correspond to the official MX code of any unmixed red dye. Jacquard Products sells three red mixtures of dyes with MX codes: one they call "032 carmine red" and label with the code "red MX-BA", a second that they call "030 fire engine red" and label with the code red MX-BRA, and a third that they call "028 bright scarlet" and label with the code scarlet MX-BA. Since each of these is a mixture of two or more other dyes, it is difficult or impossible to find an exact equivalent among the dyes sold by another retailer. Also, because of the fact that they are mixtures, I personally do not find them useful as mixing primaries; I find unmixed dyes to be superior for use as mixing primaries, since they are both more versatile and more predictable. I personally prefer to use a bright red dye, either red MX-5B or red MX-8B, as a mixing primary, whether I am trying to mix a bright color or a dark one, and vary only my other mixing primaries. In addition, for mixing some colors, I prefer to use magenta MX-B, violet MX-2R, or orange MX-2R, none of which appear in the Dreamline system. There does exist a very nice unmixed bright pink dye with a similar code, rubine MX-B, but it is difficult to find and is not suitable for mixing deep shades, such as the second color mixing chart appear to include. In conclusion, it appears likely that the red MX-B called for in the second mixing chart is a dye mixture.

Navy MX-3R ("Azurite") is, in spite of the "R"s in its code, a rather greenish dark blue dye, Colour Index reactive blue 9. Dyes with "navy" as their color base name tend to be more greenish than dyes with "blue" as their color base name. I like this dye very much as a mixing primary for dark colors, and for use in its own right. Although Jacquard Products does not sell this dye in its pure form, they do sell a mixture containing it along with some red MX-5B, as does Dharma Trading Company. I have purchased the pure unmixed reactive blue 9 from Standard Dye, in the US, and it is also available from Kraftkolour, in Australia. While navy MX-3R is my favorite of the navy blue Procion MX dyes (though I must note that I have not yet tried Kraftkolour's blue MX-2R), there are many others that will make a perfectly good substitute. Blue MX-2G, often called cobalt blue, is readily available everywhere that Procion MX dyes are sold. Another dark blue Procion MX dye, blue MX-4GD, is also a single-hue unmixed dye, though harder to find; it is a little greener than the others, but useful for the same mixing purposes. It is available from ProChem in the US and from some German dye suppliers.

While there are some additional unmixed Procion MX dyes which I find useful as mixing primaries, the Dreamline/Stof tot verven color mixing scheme is very nicely laid out. You can order a printed color chart from Stof tot verven which will be more reliable than color chips viewed on a computer screen. There are more suggestions on mixing Procion MX dye colors on my page, "How can I mix Procion MX dyes to get specific colors?".

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Posted: Saturday - October 08, 2011 at 10:30 AM

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Tracking down Procion MX mixing primaries

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