Vat Dyeing with Jacquard SolarFast Dyes

Jacquard founder Michael Katz takes us inside his dye studio (i.e., his green house) to demonstrate vat dyeing with SolarFast dyes. The challenge is to dye two large pieces of blended silk/rayon velvet to an intense, and even color. SolarFast dyes are generally used for sun-printing (they are light-activated), but they are formulated from vat dyes, which can also be activated chemically, without sunlight. Vat dyes have one very unique property: they are colorless in the dye bath! Fabric is saturated in the colorless dye (which is usually heated to about 80F), then dipped in an activation bath. As soon as the fabric goes into the second bath, it instantaneously becomes colored. You can see in the video how it instantly turns bright orange.
Dyeing with vat dyes is a great way to achieve super intense and even color when dyeing large amounts of fabric at once, which is generally quite challenging. There is also a very cool "wow" factor when the color "magically" appears!

https://www.jacquardproducts.com/sola...