Sustainability within the Textile/Fashion Industry

With hand-in drawing closer I found myself with some extra time to do some final dyeing without leaves and making pattern prints, but rather just testing colours. On-campus in the dye lab, we had several old leftover dyeing items such as nuts, cochineal (which I have researched earlier in this blog), safflower, goldenrod, and other natural colours. They range from bright yellows to reds and some browns but not any green surprisingly.  I got 3 pieces of silk, 3 wool, and 3 cotton. One of each fabric was copper mordanted, then one of each was allum mordanted and the last lot was mordanted with iron.  I chose to dye with safflower (orangey-brown) on the iron samples because the already beige fabric would potentially enhance the orange tones. Goldenrod (bright yellow) was the second choice that I paired with copper due to the blue tones to try and create a green colour. Lastly, I wanted to try the cochineal (red) to judge for myself if it is as effective as people say. I tested wi...

  Started designing!! This design includes 3 of my samples made using the natural dye technique with leaves, onion skin, coffee, and copper mordanting. The fabrics used in these samples are silk and wool. Perhaps silk for a spring/summer kimono, and wool in the autumn/winter seasons.  I blew up the scale of my prints for these designs but didn't edit the colour at all or the design would not be achievable through natural processes. Obviously finding a leaf large enough to match the second kimono would be tough but in order to illustrate a unique design look that wasn't repeated print on photoshop, this was my result.  I love the colour palette and I think everything is beginning to tie in nicely! The end of the project is nearing this next coming Thursday, and I hope to hand in these visuals, my sketchbook of samples, this blog and an evaluation. Further development of the kimonos will endure over the next few days also. This project has taught me so much about who I want...

 Part of this module has been focused on attending workshops. As well as self-directed study, discovering methods online that I could use to dye fabric naturally, I attended some online Zoom workshops.  One of these workshops was a fashion factory tour in London - showing the real price of our clothes. I found this very inciteful because it really made me realise how unbelievably cheap some fast fashion is marketed despite production costs meaning these cheap clothes are made by extremely underpaid workers. This is something I am already aware of and against, so to be able to see a factory in the UK where the workers are treated better meaning clothing prices rise makes me happy. A second workshop attended was about fashion illustration. In this session I was shown a method used by artist Elyse Blackshaw (linked below). Elyse used strokes, dashes, dots and a combination of mark making to create textures that imitated real fabric. I learnt new methods of drawing fur and the cla...

Following my experiments last week, I decided to dive deeper. The battle between copper vs iron! Cutting 9 thin strips, I prepared silk, cotton, and wool to be tested. One of each fabric went into iron, one of each into copper solution and the last piece of each fabric was not soaked in any solution. All fabrics were washed and scoured to remove any chemical finish that may prevent staining.  I soaked the fabrics in solution for 25 minutes and then once mordanted I began the same process as before, scattering softer leaves, onion skin, coffee and tea this time. I rolled the 9 fabric strips up, hung them with string round a wooden spoon and steamed them in W pot with a little water, on a hob. (Ensuring the fabric wasn’t in the water, but just above it). The final results are in!  The copper is definitely the winner for me. It stains the fabric less and really brought out the green and reds beautifully. There’s also less indistinct smearing going on but more defined shapes....

An exciting step in the project! Finally starting the natural dye techniques at University.  What we have in the photos above: 2% weight of the fabric (in grams) of copper powder and another of iron powder went into two separate pan of hot water. I boiled silk, and cotton in these solutions in a process called 'mordanting'.  Mordant - A mordant or dye fixative is a substance used to set dyes on fabrics by forming a coordination complex with the dye, which then attaches to the fabric. It may be used for dyeing fabrics or for intensifying stains in cell or tissue preparations.   So I had 4 types of fabric to test: silk treated with copper, silk treated with iron, Cotton with copper, and cotton with iron. All fabrics were cut to be thin strips to reduce waste for these samples.  Following this process, I then foraged around for leaves and petals that I could find on campus. I was mainly looking for softer thin leaves that would transfer the colour much easier than waxy...

Today marks the start of experiments and design development. I have begun gathering and foraging natural flowers and leaves that are plentiful in my garden to start. Focusing on colours of this season and non-imported nature keeps me on theme with sustainability and eco-ethics. The picture above shows an initial mood board with my first print results on cotton and some colour swatches. I tested the hammer technique, taped and smashed some leaves, berries, grass, and petals on pure cotton fabric. Instead of buying new fabric, I delved into my scrap bin and found some old discoloured white pillowcases made from pure cotton. Out of pure curiosity, I also tested some silk. I found that the silk was quite greedy and bled a lot, taking in too much of the fresh plants’ water content making quite a blurry watered-down print. The cotton, however, soaked up some water but mostly the colour. The tiny woven detail in the fabric’s grain stopped colour bleeding and made for a more crisp print. I the...

Hello, fellow eco readers. I have now reached the point in my research where I begin exploring design. What fabrics will I use? What is my sustainability goal with this design? Am I creating fashion or textile? It's taken some revision and exploration into natural dyes. I started by contacting Billy Nou, a Botanical Natural dye fanatic/connoisseur on Youtube mentioned in my last blog post (https://edenmatisse.blogspot.com/2021/03/animal-right-within-textile.html). I messaged Billy and asked her about her thoughts on the use of cochineal beetles as a 'natural' red pigment. She said that her assumption was that these beetles were already dead when crushed, but when she discovered that wasn't the case, decided to stop using carmine red dye and instead explore madder. Madder is a much more naturally earthy-red pigment sourced from plants, that appears to work best on cotton and bamboo fabric. Thanks to Billy's video, and some at-home flower printing experimentation, I t...

All around the world people are making textiles, clothes, dyed fabrics. Cochineal Beetles are little white parasitic bugs found on cacti mainly in Latin America. When crushed in the cocooned state they explode a red pigment that is used in food, drink, cosmetics, and many other industries including fashion. More commonly known as carmine, this pigment is globally used. This sparks an issue with animal rights activists. They argue that just because they are small creatures that don't verbalise pain, does that give us the right to crush them just to make lipstick?  I came across two videos this week. One, a woman from Mexico and the other a woman from Peru, both demonstrating the traditional use of these beetles to dye wool or fabrics. María Luis Mendoza de Cruz, Mexico, the wife of acclaimed Master Weaver Fidel Cruz Lazo shows in a workshop the crushing of these dried cocooned cochineal bugs and how adding acid will lighten the red colour, and adding alkaline creates a deep violet o...

Within my research, I wanted to touch more on the meaning of Sustainability. I found an article online stating that there are 3 known principles. These are referred to as Pillars: - Economy - Society - Environment Informally referred to as profit people and planet, these three pillars help us understand what sustainability really affects.  My chosen subject, natural dyes falls under the environment pillar mostly which opens a path of exploration into other parts of fashion sustainability such as the effects on the ocean, carbon footprints, material waste, and animal cruelty.  You know the price you pay for your clothes, but do you know the price the planet is also paying?