Mixing Greens

[tiedyejudy]

I have a client who has requested vibrant greens.  My experience with mixing green is that sometimes I get great results, sometimes the green comes out aqua or pale, uninteresting green.  I have reviewed the charts from Dharma and ProChem and I'm not finding what I'm looking for which is a bright lime green.  Pro Chem is fairly close, but still pretty tame.  I'm sure if I used pigment paints I would find it, but I really want to get it with dyes if possible.  I'm going to post a picture that has a green I got several years ago using the formula in the Rainbow Tie-dye book:
2-3 Tbsp Turquoise to 1/2 cup yellow.  
As I recall, I dyed this when the shirt had been soaked in soda ash, then completely dried.  Does moisture content have that much impact on color?  I know if the shirt had been very wet, I would have gotten less color, but usually what I get is boring, bland green instead of the vibrant green in this example. Or, on occasion, the yellow disappears completely and I am left with an aqua shade.  Anyone out there with insight on how to get consistent results with mixing green?

Judy

[pburch]

I've never had troubles getting bright greens. I think it's just a question of dye concentration, and of course the temperature problem we've often seen with turquoise. I always use a LOT of turquoise, at least 4 teaspoons per cup, maybe more, or half that much cerulean, and then add from 1/4 teaspoon to 2 teaspoons of yellow MX-8G. For a bright lime green you'd use the larger amount of yellow. Here's a picture of a bright green LWI rayon outfit I dyed with turquoise MX-G, yellow MX-8G, and a navy that I like which is not available from most retail dye suppliers, reactive blue 9. Not sure if I also used some blue MX-R, or if that's just the blue number 9.



I was aiming at a much bluer green, but my Dharma turquoise had gotten very weak with age. Usually inadequately bright turquoise is due to low room temperature, but in this case the temperature was fine, and the dye was old. (I now prefer other suppliers, but this wasn't really their fault, in that it was a couple of years old, and they claim a shelf life of only one year. My reactive blue 9 is much older but still going strong!) This color is too bright for me or for the friend I made it for to actually wear, but it's so pretty that I still haven't gotten around to overdyeing it to be less blinding and more wearable.

Jacquard's MX color mixing chart has a number of greens, including yellow green, chartreuse, vermillion green, lime green, spring green, and shamrock. Their lime green is 2.75  teaspoons of yellow MX-8G to 1.125 teaspoons of turquoise MX-G. They don't give the amount of water this is to be dissolved in, presumably because this is a chart for solid-color dyeing, but I still find it useful now and then.

Paula

[tiedyejudy]

I always use a LOT of turquoise, at least 4 teaspoons per cup, maybe more, or half that much cerulean, and then add from 1/4 teaspoon to 2 teaspoons of yellow MX-8G.

Here is where I get confused:  My mixing instructions talk about 2-3T Turquoise (pre-mixed) to 1/2 cup yellow (pre-mixed).  I am assuming your instructions are for unmixed dye, or am I wrong?  i.e., 4 teaspoons turquoise dye powder and 1/4 teaspoon to 2 teaspoons yellow dye powder to 1 cup water.  My basic chart calls for 2 teaspoons dye powder to 1 cup of water, except for fuschia (use 1/2 as much) or turquoise (use half again as much).  So my pre-mixed turquoise has 1 tablespoon dye powder per cup.  When I mix my green, I have a cup of yellow(2 tsp dye powder) and I usually only put 2 T of pre-mixed turquoise.  Even that isn't as bright as I would like.  So if you can clarify whether you are measuring dry or liquid, that might solve my mystery!

Thanks, Paula....

Judy

[pburch]

I'm talking about dye powder. If you make your dye by mixing 2 teaspoons of turquoise per cup of water (kind of weak already for that color, in my opinion), that's what you apply directly to the soda-soaked fabric.

If you're mixing 1 tablespoon of turquoise into a cup of water, then putting only 2 tablespoons of that liquid dye solution into a cup of liquid, then it's no wonder if you sometimes get weak colors when you tie-dye with it! That's less than half a teaspoon of dye powder per cup of water, once you've mixed it.  But I'm really into bright, intense colors. I'd much rather use too much dye than too little, since my effort costs me more than my materials do. Also, I do not usually thicken my dyes, and Steve says you get more intense colors with thickened than unthickened dyes, so that might be another reason why you personally can usually get by with a lot less dye than I do. Another thing is that I usually wring out garments only by hand, rather than spinning them in the machine, so I probably have more water in my shirts to begin with than you do.

My standard green for tie-dyeing damp soda-soaked garments is made by mixing 1 cup of dissolved turquoise, which contains four to eight teaspoons of turquoise MX-G dye powder (or only two to four teaspoons of cerulean blue = blue MX-G dye powder), with one-half to one cup of dissolved yellow, which contains 2 to 4 teaspoons of dye powder per cup of urea water. (That's with one tablespoon of urea per cup of water, but no other chemicals, since I don't have hard water.)

Paula

[mysticmountainsmama]

My recipe for lime green is 2 parts (clear or lemon) yellow and 1 part turquoise. I'm mixing liquid dye, I love the intensity of this colour!