Dyeing delights

We're at the stage of selecting and ordering the fabrics for our schools art/science project. Dyeing will loom large, both disperse dyeing of synthetic fabrics and reactive dyeing of natural fabrics. In the picture the three left hand fabrics and synthetic and the one on the extreme right is cotton. The top row have been disperse dyed and the bottom row treated with reactive dye. We chose polyester crepe de chine from the top row because as you can see, it took the disperse dye best.

You asleep yet?

If you're still awake and alert you will have spotted synthetic fabric number three (dark green) masquerading as a natural fabric. That's because it's rayon, made from treated cellulose (wood pulp to you and me). Now aren't you glad you dropped by?

We wanted to give the kids a 'spot the synthetic' game to play so we'll have them reactive dye both the cotton and the polyester. As you can see in the bottom row the polyester crepe de chine stays obligingly white as the driven snow, thus identifying itself as the synthetic.

The cotton however will take a bit of disperse dye, albeit not so strongly, but we'll leave that experiment out. Don't want to confuse their tiny minds.

So 60 metres of fabric to be measured and ripped...here we come!