Mixing Fiber Reactive Dyes

Even though I’ve been using fiber reactive dyes now for about two years, I’ve never mixed “pure” dyes to make specific colors. I always just bought the premixed colors. After taking Jane Dunnewold’s Craftsy class, The Art of Cloth Dyeing, I thought I’d try to mix some with her formulas.

On this day I dyed both thrift shop finds and also shirts purchased from Dharma Trading. Since I’m dyeing clothing for me, I like the fact the thrift shop finds fit me. Of course, all of them are 100% cotton. I found several tshirts that were stained, but they dyed beautifully.

Here are my results:

Leaf Green tshirt
Leaf Green tshirt
Teal dyed tshirt
Teal dyed tshirt
Tomato dyed shirt
Tomato dyed shirt
Teal and Rust dyed tshirt
Teal and Rust dyed tshirt
Lime dyed shirt
Lime dyed shirt

I absolutely loved the teal, rust and tomato. Lime was a bit bright for me so I will probably overdye it. Mixing the colors is an extra step. When I was doing it I thought it was a a lot of trouble to get colors that I could get close to just by buying premixed. But after seeing the results, the colors are just so awesome.

There is more mixing in my future.