red

"They seek him here, they seek him there..."

I like red. It makes me smile. When it behaves itself.

Unfortunately, when it comes to dyes and fabric paints, it seems to have a bit of an aversion to behaving itself. It plays hide and seek behind pinks and oranges and won't come out to play by itself... which for such a loud colour is surprising really. You'd think it wouldn't be so shy.

Up until now, I've been using Dylon dyes for my hand dyed t-shirts. I can buy them locally and they are easy to use and on the whole they are pretty reliable colourwise - I've done a LOT of dying and only had a couple of occasions where they haven't 'done what they said on the tin' - but they don't do a 'proper' red. 

They have a Burlesque Red (which is actually a purple) and a Tulip Red (which tries a bit harder, but is actually a pink)

So, I bought a couple of  Procion dyes to try out to see if they could do any better.

It looked quite promising to begin with...

...and my camera seems to disagree with my eyes a bit, but the finished result is not red...

...'tis pink...

I'm not sure where I've gone wrong, I followed the instructions carefully. Weighed and measured everything properly. I think perhaps it's just going to take a bit more experimenting - the instructions, while including other materials, are written primarily for people dying wool, and I'm dying cotton. I think it'll be back in the bucket for this t-shirt later and fingers crossed a second dying will do it.

But in the meantime, the search continues as I have the same problem with the paints I use for my painted t-shirts.

I don't want pretending-to-be-red orange, or pretending-to-be-red pink. 

I want blood red, pillar box red, shouty-in-your-face-RED-red. 

We have red clothes in our house, so I know it's out there somewhere! ;-)