I was in a bit of a hurry yesterday when I posted and obviously wrote a very poor explanation of Color Magnet. You can read more about it on Dharma Trading, they have a few videos too. The Color Magnet is this really gooey stuff that you can apply to undyed fabric through a silk screen, stencil or stamp. I used silk screens. The fish I posted about yesterday was screened on and then dry dye powder was added to the wet Color Magnet.

All of these were screened on. The cotton fabric was then dyed with fiber reactive dyes and soda ash. So the leaves above were where the Color Magnet was screened on and let dry. Then I put the fabric in a baggie with green dye and the color magnet attracts more dye than the regular cotton so the leaves are a darker green than the background. Kind of neat.

This was a screen that was originally a photo of marbles. It’s a little hard to see due to the lighter gold color.

This last piece of cotton was dyed with turquoise. It worked really well. This screen was a paper laminated screen that I made several years ago.

And of course I needed to try the product out on wool. The Color Magnet says that it works with all types of dye so I thought it would work the same with the acid dyes. I screen printed the Color Magnet on a piece of white commercial wool and let it dry. Then I put the wool in a “Cabernet” colored dye pot and let it simmer for 30 minutes. The lighter areas are where the Color Magnet was applied. So it worked more like a resist instead of attracting more dye. I think the areas that are mid value were where the Color Magnet was applied but not as thick. Needless to say, it didn’t work as advertised but I really like the results. The varying values give the piece a lot of depth.

So I hope that gives a little bit better explanation of using Color Magnet. It seems to work best on cotton fabric with fiber reactive dyes. Let me know if you give it a try!