Are you familiar with Radiance? It’s a fabric that is 50% silk and 50% cotton, and Kaufman now makes a PFD version of it. I’ve got a customer who wants some bright silky fabric, but was worried that working with 100% silk would be too difficult, as she’s working with some very small pieces. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try out Radiance!
So I dyed some Radiance side by side with my regular PFD dyer’s cloth, just a quick trip around the color wheel to see how and if the hues shift on the Radiance.
After washing and drying, here’s what happened:
Very pretty! Just as vibrant as my cotton, with a lovely sheen! When you line them up side by side, you can see that the radiance shifts away from the turquoise a bit:
Where you see this is in the purple – it’s a bit redder, and the green – it’s a bit yellower.
One thing I didn’t expect about the radiance is that it has two different sides – a silky side and a cottony side. The silky side of the radiance has a lot less visual texture than the cotton, even though it was squished into a container with the same amount of pressure that I used with the cotton. Flip it over and you can still see a fair amount of visual texture on the back of the radiance:
Tomorrow I’ll show you what I ended up dyeing for my client! I really can’t wait to use some of this for myself!
9 Responses
You are very thorough when testing a new product. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! I hadn’t heard of Radiance (I’m in Australia)… Am I right in thinking that you usually use different types of dye for protein and cellulose fibres? How does that work with them both combined? Also, are you going to use the silky side out, even though it has less visual texture? Would it look or feel much different to cotton if you put the cottony side out? Sorry about all the questions – but it’s so interesting!
Those are good questions – I’m going to add the info to my follow up post tomorrow, so stay tuned!
Creative and scientific – yay!
Such yummy colors!
Gorgeous, Candy. I’ve found that snow-dyeing Radiance is pretty much a waste. Same problem with the patterning. It is so gorgeous in solids, and discharges wonderfully. Thanks for sharing your work!
Candy, these look delicious. The photos are a treat in themselves. They look – radiant!
Thanks for the post. I was using a 50% cotton and 50% bamboo recently from JoAnns…made by RocLon. It allowed for maximum saturation with a 200 thread count…and with a 50% off coupon, I could get a 12 yard bolt for $35.00 + tax ($3 per yard, not bad). The hand of this bamboo cotton mix was so soft, almost like silk. I understand from JoAnns that Roc-Lon will not be manufacturing it anymore. I would love to find a similar fabric. Any suggestions? Thanks.
ps Looking forward to your dye class online.
Johanna in WI