Fabric Natural
Posted in fabric on 01/11/2011 11:20 am by admin |
ClosetMaid 8697 Fabric Drawer, Natural List Price: $8.99 Sale Price: $5.99 Used From: $4.99  |
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These drawers are made from high-quality fabric, and are intended for use with ClosetMaid's six- and nine-cube storage organizers. Use with the closet doors to create a nice-looking, versatile storage area... |
How do I make natural/organic dye for cooton fabric?
Hi everyone, I'm doing my Investigatory Project for Chem, and I was asked to make a dye out of plant materials such as leaves to dye cotton fabric, but I actually have no experience, please, any suggestions?
In the chemistry lab, "natural" and "organic" are completely different things. An "organic" dye is any dye that contains carbon, which is to say all dyes other than mineral dyes; all synthetic manufactured dyes are organic chemicals, though they are not considered "natural". A "natural" dye is derived with minimal processing from plants or insects.
You cannot dye cotton with most natural dyes unless you mordant the cotton first. Cotton does not have a great deal of affinity to most natural dyes, so they will just wash out. To mordant cotton, boil it successively with alum and tannin, using one of the many published recipes. The alum and the tannin can form loose bonds to the cotton. You can then dye the mordanted cotton by boiling it for an hour with two to three times its weight, along with some natural dyestuff that has already been found to make a good dye. This is the procedure to be followed for most natural dyes. However, indigo is completely different and must be applied in a reducing bath with sodium hydroxide and sodium dithionite.
Most natural colored materials will not make good dyes. Even when applied to mordanted fabric, most natural colorings will wash out. There are some excellent natural dyes, but they are relatively rare. The process of dyeing with natural materials has been subject to intense trial and error for thousands of years. I recommend that you seek out a good book on natural dyeing. One of the best choices is J.N. Liles' The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing: Traditional Recipes for Modern Use.
Some of the best natural dyes are indigo (obtained from indigo plants and also made synthetically) for blue, quercitron (obtained from the inner bark of black oak trees) for yellow, and cochineal (obtained by grinding up the cochineal insects that infest prickly pear cactuses) for red. Trying to dye green with leaves, or purple with wine or berries, produces a dull color that fades rapidly. This is why natural dyers have preferred to produce green for over a thousand years only by overdyeing indigo-dyed fabrics with a yellow dye such as weld.
If you have several years to complete this project, you can try making your own dyes with plants that you grow yourself. If not, you will need to obtain natural dyestuffs that have been produced by others. They are much more expensive than synthetic dyes. Look at the websites of Aurora Silk and Earthues, which are two good natural dye retailers in the US.
One of the easiest natural dyes to obtain and use is turmeric, a spice sold in groceries stores which is very concentrated in color. It can be used without mordanting, but works better on mordanted fabric. Turmeric dye fades quickly in natural light, so it is not well suited for clothing, but it works well enough for an introductory laboratory demonstration.