"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...
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQbeC4CQ9He7vlCvwypRbScCTMlb-213cgyhi0q79crdt3K9AfALFgxiDzHLbdwjxuJjv9kw1OAxEjSSj9gXi_0bFEJY_H1S84RUqQ_VRLyig6pztzMaOcGDDUu8Er4ox0XkIhslkh8RQ/s280/Picnik+collage+red2.jpg)
...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! ;-)
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