Can I substitute guar gum for alginate in screen printing with Procion MX type dyes?
Name: Mimi Message: I have read your site a hundred times over and keep coming back here looking for the answer. I would like to use my fiber reactive/ procion mx dyes that I got a dharma trading company for screen printing but I can’t seem to get a straight answer from anywhere. I saw that you mentioned guar gum as a thickener, well I have that and wanted to know if I could use it instead of the sodium alginate or is it absolutely mandatory to use the sodium alginate? If I was to use the guar gum would I follow the same recipe and steps that I have seen for the regular sodium alginate? Thanks for your time and consideration. It’s likely that you will have more difficulty in getting deep colors with guar gum than with alginate, when printing with MX dyes. It was not in the FAQ, but here’s a relevant post from this Hand Dyeing Q&A blog on April 29, 2005: “Is it possible to thicken dye?”: “Guar gum is not ideal, because it reacts with fiber reactive dyes, reducing the amount of dye that
