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:
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.
Neat colors! I usually use pre-mixed myself, but have come up with a couple of custom recipes for colors I can’t find. It’s always good to know you can mix colors if you want to!