Procion Dye: Shades of Turquoise

Shades of Turquoise on Fabric with Procion Dye

Today, I am excited to show you how you can achieve various shades of turquoise using Procion dye. Procion dyes are cold water reactive dyes that chemically bond to fiber. I am using the turquoise Procion as the base color dye for my upcoming indigo textile designs. Below are the various cottons and linens that I have prepared in soft turquoise blue. 

This project is for anyone looking to explore ways to hand-dye fibers: weavers, quilters, crafters, and fashion designers. Really anyone looking for tips on the best way to dye something with a gradient of hues!

Read on to see how easy it is to dye with Procion dye and how I achieved these different results.

To create your own shades of turquoise blue fabrics and fibers in Procion dye you will need: 

1. Jacquard Procion Mx turquoise: a cold water reactive dye that comes in a variety of colors
2. Soda Ash: dye fixer must be used
3. Cotton fibers: closed and semi-closed weave
4. Tea towels *optional
5. Repurposed fabrics: I used some gray, light teal, and light pink fabric that I wanted to re-color in a turquoise hue. 
6. Large bucket or 3 gallon dish basin
   

Once you have gathered all of your materials, you can prepare your dye bath. I prepare the work area by covering my studio table with a plastic drop cloth and I set out the 3 gallon dish basin. I chose that container because I found myself wasting a lot of dye and now I divide my Procion dye jar into 2 dye baths on average. I use about 1/2 of the Procion dye jar with 1/2 cup of soda ash dye fixer, then stir into the cold water.

Once all the dye powders are mixed in you are ready to dye! 

TIPS: For best results always make sure to add in the soda ash fixer and let fabrics soak for varying amounts of time in excess of 30 minutes. Most of my results below were right around 30 minutes, although I left 1-2 for longer. 40 minutes to an hour is recommended. Next, I let the turquoise dye fix before rinsing it out completely. This time I rinsed mine out a bit early and would have had deeper results had I let it fix for longer.  

Fabric descriptions, clockwise from top left:
1. Gray cotton previously dyed light pink 2. Light pink cotton tea towel 3. Thick organic cotton absorbent burp cloth 3. white cotton linen  5. upholstery weight teal/gray fabric 6-7. different weight white cotton linen 

​As you can see the 2 fabrics in the top left corner, that were previously dyed pink have a purplish quality to them. You can also see the turquoise dye results on wooden beads. I can not wait to transform each piece of fabric individually to see what I can create. 

I hope you have enjoyed this simple Procion dye tutorial. Do you have a piece in mind that you would like to update through dye? 

I will be over-dyeing many of these turquoise fabrics with natural indigo dye using various Shibori stitching techniques. I am reading the book: Stitched Shibori: Technique, Innovation, pattern and design by Jane Callender.

If you would like to see the results over-dyeing Procion with indigo using Shibori, then please see my original post, Shibori on Procion Dye: Part 1, where I show the hira nui stitching technique. 

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