mixing purples

[Marg]

If anyone would like to share their recipe for different purples, I'd appreciate it. I have always bought purples. FYI, I don't mix liquids, but Tablespoons of dye into chem water. 2T dye per 2 cups of solution or water is what I use. In my old notes, I have 1/2 Tablesp. fuchsia + 1 1/2 Tablesp. turquoise to make 2 cups of purple. Thanks, Marg

[fiberartist219]

I was just going to mention that you'll want to use about three times as much blue as you use red, but I think you got the hang of that. You can use different blues and different reds to get different purples, but you've got the basic idea.

[tiedyejudy]

I use equal parts of ProChem's mixing red and mixing blue.  The purple I get is like a Royal Purple.  I was never satisfied with the purple I got using fuschia and turquoise,  and I didn't like the pre-mixed purples I got from DT.

Judy

[pburch]

I have probably never met a purple I didn't like (though some of the contexts for them have been questionable). Some of my favorites:

• Violet MX-2R (often sold under the made-up name violet MX-G). Dharma and ProChem both sell it under the name Grape, and Jacquard Products as 231 violet. Since this is a single-hue unmixed dye, you don't get odd halos (though those can be fun), and you can get the identical hue on different fabrics (such as silk and cotton), something that is difficult to achieve with mixed purples.
  

• Navy blue MX-3R plus red MX-5B. Navy blue MX-3R is sold with a little red MX-5B already mixed in as Jacquard Product's navy 078. I also bought it unmixed from Standard Dyes. You can't get it from ProChem or Dharma, but they have other navy blues that will do. Buying from Standard Dyes is an adventure - you must insist that they guarantee that the dye they send you is the same as a specific Color Index number, as otherwise they may substitute a similar-hue premixed color. Their prices are great, though. There are other good navy blue Procion MX dyes, but reactive blue 9 is a little bit less green than either cobalt blue (the same "mixing blue" from ProChem that Judty is using) or blue MX-4RD, so I like it better for mixing purples. The other two navies are good bets, too, though. You can get by just fine with any one of these three different navy blue MX dyes.

• Blue MX-G plus red MX-5B. For a bright series, I like to make up a bottle with red MX-5B or red MX-8B, and another with turquoise (turquoise MX-G) or cerulean (blue MX-G), then put equal parts of these two into another bottle, 2 parts red to one part blue in another bottle, two parts blue to one part red in a fourth bottle, etc. I do not necessarily use twice as much blue as red for a middle purple, as some people recommend. Of course, when you are dyeing by the teaspoon, instead of weighing your dyes (and I agree that dyeing by the teaspoon is less trouble), the relative amount you get from one jar of dye may be quite different from what you get from another jar of the exact same dye, since dyes are standardized to give the same strength per gram, not per spoonful, so it's all trial and error anyway.

• Blue MX-7RX plus violet MX-2R. I love to combine these two in LWI. Aljo Mfg, a dye company in New York, is selling blue Mx-7RX in the US these days. It's one of the "European blues" that are hard to find in the US. It is such a lovely blue-violet! Unfortunately, it is not very lightfast on cotton, but Deborah Harowitz of Scarlet Zebra says it is much more lightfast on silk than on cotton.
  

Paula

[ktaltre]

Paula,
I am looking at the Aljo site - the color chart - which blue is the MX-7RX? Is it perhaps the "deep violet"?
The other blues seem quite blue, at least on my screen.
Thanks!
k. taltre

[pburch]

I don't believe that it's on the Aljo site at all. You have to call them or write to them. They referred to it in email as "Blue MX-7RX Reactive Blue 161" and told me that it costs $4.40 for half an ounce, $17.55 for four ounces, $25.60 for half a pound, $36.60 for one pound. They said that it tests very strong and consistent with standard, but that they will claim no more than 6 months as a shelf life.

They said they also have red MX-G (reactive red 5) in stock right now. This is a very hard-to-find true red, not magenta like red MX-5B or red MX-8B. It seems very slightly bluish in sunlight and very slightly orangish under incandescent light. I had some before that I bought from Standard, but I didn't think it was any better than mixing red MX-5B with orange MX-2R, and it was very expensive at that time and a bit of a pain to dissolve.

Paula