Procion MX Dye Color Set, Includes 13-2/3 Ounce Jars, 2-1lb Soda Ash Dye Fixer, Instruction Sheet, Color Chart

I bought this kit to dye a few white t-shirts that I've been using as undershirts for the last few years. The t-shirts had perspiration stains under the arms, but I love the fabric and fit so much that I wanted to see if I could rescue them. Now, all the dyeing websites will tell you not to work on old, stained clothing. That is probably prudent advice, as I'll discuss later! I was willing to take the risk, especially as practice learning how to dye in case I decide on a larger project down the road. What I love about this set is that it contains the printer's primaries -- cyan, magenta, and yellow, plus black -- so that you can mix your own colors. With just three shirts to dye, I could have bought three premixed colors instead of four primaries. But I find that a bit limiting, and wanted to have fun mixing my own. This kit also includes enough soda ash to do about 5-6 dye baths (bucket method), but if you run out, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda is 100% soda ash and readily available for a few bucks at the grocery store or drugstore. I dyed my shirts using the immersion method in a 5-gallon bucket (actually, mine was a 4-gallon kitty litter bucket). You can do this in the washing machine, but you have to use a lot more dye, soda ash, and salt, and you still have to babysit the machine to make sure it doesn't start the rinse cycle before you're ready. I find it more economical and not that much more labor-intensive to just do it in a bucket. For the first shirt, I was trying for sort of an indigo color, a deep blue-purple. I mixed 3/4 tsp. of the fuchsia dye and 1 1/4 tsp. of the turquoise in a mason jar and added a little bit of water to make a paste, then a little more water to get a pourable dye. I filled my bucket a little over halfway with water, added two cups of non-iodized table salt, stirred to dissolve, and then added the dye. Finally, I added my t-shirt, which I had dampened. After stirring off and on for about 20 minutes, I mixed 1/3 cup of soda ash into warm water in the mason jar and added a third of it to the bucket, stirred for 5 minutes, added another third, stirred for 5 minutes, then the last third and another 5 minutes of stirring. Finally, I gave the shirt another 45 minutes in the dye bath, stirring periodically. I put it in the washing machine, ran a rinse cycle, then washed it with detergent in hot water and tumbled dry. (This technique came from pburch.net, an incredibly thorough site on dyeing.) You can see the result in the far left of the customer image I uploaded. It's hardly the indigo I was going for! In fact, it was a happy accident, because I was planning to turn one of the t-shirts into a raspberry color, and that's exactly what I got. But what went wrong? Well, I did a little research and learned that turquoise is a particularly finicky dye. On the Procion dye jars, it says to mix the dye into cold water, and that's where I went wrong. My research revealed that the water should in fact be at *least* room temperature, if not warmer for turquoise. I even saw some suggestions to put the dye-soaked fabric in the microwave to accelerate the process! I wasn't brave enough to do that, but I was happy to try warmer water with my second shirt. This time, I placed my bucket in a bathtub and filled it with warm-to-hot water, about 110 degrees. I also filled the bathtub with hot water to try to maintain the warm temperature in the bucket. I used much, much more turquoise in the second batch: 2 tsp. of turquoise and only 1/4 tsp. of fuchsia. Otherwise, I followed the procedure exactly as I had for the first shirt. The result was a very pretty periwinkle, not quite the rich indigo I had aimed for, but again, a lovely color I'm thrilled with. (I should note here that the amount of dye you use determines how light or dark the final result. It's suggested to use about 1 tablespoon of dye for a medium color or 2 tablespoons for a dark color, per pound of fabric. You scale up or down based on fabric weight. My t-shirts each weighed just 1/4 pound, so this suggests 1/4 tablespoon for medium or 1/2 tablespoon -- 1 1/2 teaspoons -- for dark. In fact I used more than this, yet got medium colors.) For my final shirt, I wanted to crack open the jar of yellow dye, so I decided to go green. I had definitely learned from the first two rounds that color mixing is an imprecise science. I wanted to err on the side of more turquoise rather than too much yellow (I love lime green but it doesn't suit my complexion at all), so I mixed 2 tsp. turquoise with 1/2 tsp. yellow. This gave a very pretty emerald, pretty much exactly the hue I was aiming for! However, this shirt ended up with blotches in spots and I can only conclude that there were some invisible marks or stains on the t-shirt that only became evident when I dyed it. This is one of the dangers of working with old fabric! Incidentally, I was most worried about the perspiration marks on the shirts, but in all cases those were nearly completely hidden by the dye. I would absolutely recommend this kit if you are willing to roll the dice a bit with respect to color. It's definitely a matter of guesswork, and I found that even testing the dye mix first on a small piece of paper towel or just observing the fabric while it was in the dye bath didn't really give a good indication of what the final result would look like. It's as much about how well the fabric takes the dye (and what technique you use, etc.) as it is about what proportions of colors you use. But it was great fun, and I still have enough dye for many more projects, especially if I replenish my turquoise supply.

My 100% cotton, lightest blue, duvet cover turned out gorgeous. It's now dark indigo (it's a bit bluer and darker than these phone pics with flash.) I had a half bottle of black liquid RIT dye sitting around so I added it to the mix, with this navy blue powder, because I wanted to make sure it came out dark enough. I thought it was going to come out dark ashy blue but I guess the RIT has some red in it. I did see red specks rinsing down the sides of my mixing bucket during prep so I'm not sure if it was from this powder or the liquid RIT. I'm OK with that because it's the original color I wanted. I just decided to go dark blue because I figured I'd have to buy 2 or 3 colors to get this beautiful dark indigo. It had yellowed from sweat, and it even had blood stains from old injuries on it. I used peroxide and ammonia and Persil, in cold water to lighten those. Then I washed it in hot water, with a bunch of Borax, soda Ash, 1 cup of salt (good for blood and protein,) and more Persil. That, surprisingly, got the old blood stains to fade the most, and the yellowed skin residue was almost unnoticeable -- should have done it a long time ago. I left the cover wet and started on my bucket mix. For a 4lb, king size cover, in my top-loading HE washer, it took 14 gallons of water, 8lbs of pickling salt, 18Tbs of this dye powder, and 1 1/2 cups of soda ash. (Technically, I ran out of soda ash so I added 1 cup of Borax and 1/2 cup of backing soda to 1 cup of soda ash, in a bowl of hot water. After stirring a lot, I strained that mix into the washing machine so the undesolved Borax wouldn't make my cover spotty, JIK.) I was religious about rearranging the cover every 5 minutes. I live at 5800 feet altitude so I added 10 minutes to the first, non-soda, stage, and 25 minutes to the soda-ash stage, so that's 25 minutes, then 1 hour and 25 minutes soaking time. Then I plugged the washer back in, let it fill up on a deep water, warm, cycle and let it run. It agitated the diluted mix for 45 minutes, then rinsed it twice. I then ran it through another almost-hot deep-water wash-and-double rinse cycle -- just water. (The rinses are always with cold water. This nicely allowed me to alternate hot and cold rinses.) I then added 14tsp of Jaquard color fixative to a single rinse & spin, deep-water, cycle. Finally, I washed the cover normally, in tap-cold water, with a bunch of other black clothes and some detergent, then dried it on low. Voila! I'm shocked at how even it came out, mainly because the unplugged washer seemed to be draining ever so slowly, to where I felt I needed more swishing room during the last 45 minutes. Instead of swishing I had to pick the cover up and dunk it again, which produced a lot of large bubbles. It was impoosible to keep it immersed over time (I even put heavy platic bottles on to.) It would have been easier to double the mix, up to 24 gallons of water, so I could stir and swish it around instead. (FYI, my recipe is already double-strength to ensure dark results.) My husband didn't believe it was the same cover. It's his favorite thing in the house, because it's soft and cool for sleeping, so I presented it to him with me wrapped under it. 😀 My only other side note is don't do this before an interview or formal occasion. My hands look like a car mechanic's even though I wore long gloves and washed them every 5 minutes. In fact car grease is easier to was off. Keep rags handy for splatters, and remember to check your face and neck after each swishing. My wasing machine came out clean as a whistle though. A mild bleach cycle could be run through it if you want to be absolutely sure it's clean.

It works as it is supposed to-quality product

The colors are so bright. I received two open and used containers, but the other 11 were sealed. Amazon made it right, so I'm super happy with that. I would definitely order again. The instructions that they included were super easy to understand, as well.

I got the dye color set and used medium blue, cobalt blue, and turquoise. I first soaked my dress in the soda ash solution for 20min, then I laid my dress on a polyester blanket and scrunched them together in random clusters of a few large tall scruches. the blanket helped me create bigger taller scrunches and did not absorb any of the dye and helped give me bigger patterns. I put some empty soda cans in the bottom of an old storage tub and put my scrunched blanket-dress structure on top. the cans helped elevate the dress so it wouldn't soak in the drain off. then I put ice to cover the dress and put dye on the ice and then put more soda ash cuz I saw online videos of ppl topping it off with more. after waiting 24hr, I rinsed it multiple times until the water was running more clear, put it in the washer alone and dried it. I was dyeing my dress for a festival and was going for watercolor effect. I saw online that ice dye is great for this and I'm super happy with how it turned out

I am incredibly disappointed. The colors came damp! Paints should be dry and crumbly, but I saw something completely different. The paints are wet, and there are large and small lumps. They are not crumbly, but in lumps! I decided to dye the clothes first, and only then draw conclusions. And what happened ? The only permanent color is pink. All pink colors prevail, they are very bright. The rest of the colors are almost completely gone! My T-shirt was supposed to be purple. I also added a lot of blue, green, and a little (a few grains) of pink. Look at the photos! The t-shirt has bright pink spots. Purple, blue and green are almost gone! Despite the fact that it was these flowers that were the most! I was shocked when I saw the result ... Look also at socks. The colors used on the socks are purple, green, and one grain of pink. Are the socks purple and green? No ! They are bright pink! Why?! Of the entire set, only pink works! the rest of the colors just wash off, they are almost invisible! I follow the rules. I have also been dyeing clothes for several years, but I used different dyes. I am horrified and very disappointed. Most likely, the quality of the dyes has suffered greatly due to the fact that they are damp! I didn't expect this. I just threw money in the trash.

Great for wool. Good bright red.

Worked somewhat as described, turned out more sheer than opaque. I followed a tutorial on YouTube and prepped with Jaquard pre wash, and used coarse salt and soda ash in my dye bath in my sink. Rinsed with the pre wash to set dye in sink before finishing washing in my machine on cold. I dyed a range of natural fabrics, all but one took the dye noticeably. I think one that was advertised as linen was a rough rayon. I dyed two “100 percent cotton” dresses from Amazon and a 100% linen dress from Linen Naive. One peach button down cotton dress is now beige-peach . Kind of reminds me of a French country brown. The dye shifted the overall tone that reads brown in some light but up close has a haze of green. This is why I’m saying it’s sheer, kind of like putting a toner on blonde hair. You can see the original tone peeking through. The pumpkin orange button down cotton dress is now more of a rust orange that looks pink on camera. The linen naive dress was pumpkin orange as well and is more brown than the others. Up close it also looks poorly dyed and has that halo of greenish brown as if the surface fuzz of the fabric took the dye better than the entirety. Luckily these are more or less costumes and these variations and unexpected results can be worked with/add interest. All in all, I dyed about 10lbs of garments. The container of dye that I purchased has roughly 5.5 teaspoons of powder in it. If you need more size up. It was enough to do a large sinkful of garments but the dye turned out to be more sheer than expected in the end so I’m thinking more dye was needed, perhaps it wasn’t concentrated enough. Next time I will also combine colors for a bit more targeted result. This color is a very cool toned brown that seems to have quite a bit of green in it.

in the picture The product is big but once you order it it's very small and even the soda ash.

Ordered through Amazon. Colour is nice though more rose than brown to be honest. Have also ordered chocolate brown to mix.

ok

Lush dye! Deffo recommend! 5**** colour stays

good product