COTTON DYEING: A POSSIBLE SUBSTITUTE FOR SYNTHETIC DYES USING NATURAL DYE DERIVED FROM VITEX NEGUNDO

Abstract

The concept of "natural dye" refers to any dye that comes from plants, animals, or minerals in nature. Since most natural dyes are not very strong, they must be applied to textiles with the aid of mordants, which are typically metallic salts that have a special affinity for both the fibres and the colouring material. When a textile material that has been impregnated with a metallic salt a process known as mordanting is dyed with various natural dyes, transition metal ions, which typically contain some mordantable groups that facilitate fixation of such dye or colourant, can act as a bridging material to create substantivity of natural dyes/colorants. Similarly, when soaked in water or boiled, the leaves of the Chinese chaste tree produce excellent yellow colouring compounds; the water is then drained out or thrown away. The current effort aimed to use the previously described extract in a sustainable manner. Thus, using alum as a colourant extract and a mordant, an attempt is made to colour cotton cloth at different temperatures. Thus, the research's conclusions point to a bright future for eco-friendly cotton fabric dyeing.