Jacquard Color Magnet for Silk Screening - 16 oz.

The nifty thing about this stuff is that it has the opposite effect of a resist so if you do designs with the color magnet and a resist like soy wax you get a triple design effect for only one pass through a dye bath.I've used this with the Fiber reactive dyes on bamboo (the socks - didn't turn out that great but I think that's because it's a thick knit and the magnet solution is a bit too gooey to soak in) on silk with dramatic effects and on cotton. In the case of silk charmeuse the magnetized area is extremely dark very high contrast with the untreated area. On habotai the effect is much less dramatic. On thin white cotton knit the effect is very pronounced but on denim that was already light blue it was more subtle.The product is gooey sort of like craft glue. I had good luck applying it with the Shiva stencils. The snowflakes were especially nice on charmeuse. It's best to be careful not to load up your brush too much or it will seep under the stencil and muddy up your shapes. On fabrics with a pronounced weave like denim (which has the twill pattern) it was much harder to get a crisp distinct shape - the texture of the fabric will wick the color magnet a bit before it dries.After dying even using the fancy fabric softener that's meant for relaxing dyed fabrics the area that was magnetized remains a trifle stiff on charmeuse but is unnoticable on the cotton and habotai. It's not pronounced enough to be a problem with drape.

Color Magnet works as stated in the description. I tried it on silk by screening over a stencil. It seems a little thin to get fine details from a stencil. I added a tiny bit of Sodium Alginate(dry) and really stirred until smooth. That helped. After the print was dry I added dye to the silk. (Dupont) I then dried and steamed the silk. After washing it the fabric returned to a soft hand. The product did what it promised - was a two tone color magnet for the silk. Did have a major problem washing out my screen. Color remained on screen and some of the Color Magnet also. Repeated scrubbing did not remove all of the product or color.

Very interesting product. Would love to see a more detailed tutorial. The length of submersion time (in dye) and dyeing technique affects the crispness of design. I experienced some smudging and transfer. Also not noted in any instructions was that it will continue to attract pigment in the wash cycles so if you don't want your "Magnet" dark area to be a surprise you should wash separately for a monochromatic effect.

This stuff is fabulous! It works exactly as promised! I used it with a stencil and the stencilled area dyed about 4 shades darker than the rest of the garment.

I used Color Magnet on Kona cotton with a detailed image on a silkscreen. After drying I dyed in Procion MX dyes. The difference created by Color Magnet is quite subtle yet definitely clear. I think this product would be best used for graphic imagery if silkscreening. It definitely was difficult to remove from the screen. I was however hoping for a more significant difference where the Magnet had been applied.