Color and MX Dyes

From Tie-dye Wiki

There are two ways to get a color with Procion MX type dyes: use a single-hue unmixed color, or use two or more colors mixed together to make a third color.

Mixed colors often separate out on the fabric when used in direct dye application, such as tie-dye. For example, a purple made by mixing red MX-8B (fuchsia) with turquoise MX-G (turquoise) will produce purple with a turquoise halo. This can be good or bad, depending on what you want.

Not all of the colors you can think of are available as pure unmixed single-hue Procion MX dyes. There is no single-hue black, for example. There is no medium brown, although there is an orangish terra-cotta brown, brown MX-GRN, and a now difficult-to-find maroon brown, brown MX-5BR, which has largely been replaced by a mixture. There is no such thing as any green Procion MX type dye. A true red that is not bluish does exist, red MX-G, but it is expensive and nearly impossible to find, and its results are no better than you might get by mixing red MX-5B with orange MX-2R.

The most popular unmixed colors in the Procion MX dye line are the printer's primaries: magenta (red MX-8B or red MX-5B), cyan (turquoise MX-G), and yellow (yellow MX-8G, yellow MX-6G, or yellow MX-4G). (A black mixture such as black MX-CWNA is often combined with these, for contrast.)

The next most-useful colors are golden yellow (yellow MX-GR or yellow MX-3R or yellow MX-3RA), orange (orange MX-2R), navy (blue MX-2G, navy blue MX-3R, or blue MX-4GD), cerulean blue (blue MX-G), medium blue (blue MX-R), and grape (violet MX-2R, often mislabeled with the meaningless dye code violet MX-G).

Among the less essential Procion MX type dyes, a berry-juice color between fuchsia and violet, probably magenta MX-B, is sold by PRO Chemical & Dye as boysenberry, with the meaningless dye code of violet MX-BR. A lovely clear cherry red, rubine MX-B, is available in quantities suitable for tie-dyers only from Grateful Dyes. A beautiful blue-violet, blue MX-7RX, can be mail-ordered from Europe, but the price is high; another problem with this particular dye is that it is unusually susceptible to fading by light.

Many other colors are available pre-mixed. The largest ranges of pre-mixed dye colors are available from PRO Chemical & Dye, Jacquard Products (Rupert, Gibbon, and Spider), Dharma Trading Company, and G&S Dye. In most cases there is no equivalent at one of these retailers for a pre-mixed dye sold by another retailer. Only the single-hue unmixed dyes, and a few manufacturer's mixtures, are the same from one retailer to another.

Manufacturer's premixed Procion MX type dyes have MX dye codes, but they are not single-hue unmixed dyes. They include replacements for single-hue dyes by the same codes that are no longer available, and some which have always been mixtures. These include most brown MX-5BR, as well as red MX-BRA (scarlet), red MX-GBA (chinese red), blue MX-4RD (navy blue), black MX-CWA, and black MX-CWNA.