Drawing with dyes

Painting in my studio

There are different types of dye to colour different types of fibres.  Predominantly I use Procion MX dyes, I can use these in the conventional way to dip dye cloth: adding concentrated dye & fixatives into a bucket, swirling it around to get an even take up [you can clamp or tie your cloth to resist the dye and get varied effects - often slightly uncontrollable though] This is great if you want an overall, background colour/quality or if you are going to use your pieces of dyed fabric for appliqué or patchwork.

Drawing and writing samples on cloth

I will admit to being a bit of a control  freak & I like colour going where I put it & whilst I do like surprises, I also have a clear artistic vision for my work.  So when I add colour onto cloth I like it to stay where I put it….to do this I use Manutex.  It’s  a thickening gel/paste.  It arrives in a powdered form & you mix it a bit like wall paper paste.  I use manutex as a ‘carrier’ for the concentrated Procion dyes, this gives me a coloured gel which I carefully decant into a squeezey bottle and I’m away …. drawing until my hearts content!  Now it does take sometime to get used to drawing with a plastic bottle – try not to squeeze to much as you’ll get uncontrollable blobs of dye…practice makes perfect.

You can also use this paste like paint – I tend to get large decorators brushes to cover over white areas quickly.

Alternatively use the coloured paste as a printing medium – it won’t dye out as quickly as printing pigment, so doesn’t block your silk screen as readily.  Remember it’s a dye rather than an opaque pigment, so colours benefit from mixing as they overlap on the cloth.

You can get all the recipes, dyes, fixatives, manutex and squeezey bottle in my Colouration Kit

Procion dyes work brilliantly on cotton, viscose/rayon, silk and linen. They fix well while they are drying, however ironing &/or steaming offers a belt and braces approach.