Eco-dyeing of silk with Dhavdi flowers and its fastness evaluation

The present study is based on the process development for colouring of silk yarns with Dhavdi flowers using selected mordants to study its effects on colour fastness properties and optimization of different extraction conditions, duration and concentration for better dye and its shades. The results revealed that aqueous medium was suitable for extraction of dye from pink petals of Dhavdi flowers for one hour. The shades of midbuff, sand stone ,coffee and olive green brown were obtained by taking 4 g dried powder of dhavdi dye for dyeing 1 gram of silk material for 45 minutes. All the four mordants were found suitable for application on silk, 10 % of alum, 3 % of chrome, 2 % of copper sulphate and 3% ferrous sulphate were found to produce best shades on silk material. Post mordanting had resulted in darker shades in all the mordant. Simultaneous mordanting method was found best in case of chrome mordant. Excellent to outstanding fastness to sunlight was found in all mordanted samples. There was absolutely no staining in washed samples. Colour change was not found in the samples subjected to crocking in both dry and wet conditions except in case of ferrous mordanted samples,. The colour was stable as shown by their higher resistance towards acidic and alkaline perspiration. Hence, the dye obtained from Dhavdi flowers proved to be extremely good and can be recommended for dyeing silk fabric