I'm really jealous of the Wool People. There's so many fun fibers and colors of fibers for them to play with, but I have my insane reasons for limiting myself to cotton. In the meantime, I'm diligently spinning an entire pound of white cotton sliver, and surprise, it's not that exciting. I have plans to dye it after it's plied, but that's a long ways off. So, I got to thinking, if the Wool People are able to dye their Superwash Merino before spinning, well, could I do the same with cotton? Joan Ruane, the cotton guru, has done it before, and so maybe I can too. Then I'll have a ton (well, just under 2 lbs) of pretty fibers running through my fingers as I spin my favorite fiber ever.
Dyeing cotton is not a new experience for me. I've done a lot of shirts, sheets, and fabric. I've tie-dyed, tub dyed and painted with dye. I've taught other people to do it. I've overseen classes on dyeing. I'm not that good at it, but I understand, or at least have heard of, most of the basic ways you can add color to cotton. However, other than on the internet (and even that information is scarce), I have yet to see anyone dye cotton lint. There might be a reason not to. I'm going to find out. I tried two different methods. Tub dyeing and direct application.
Tub Dyeing
I tried to kinda-sorta followed Joan's directions and Dharma's. The following is an account of what really happened. I do not blame you for skimming past right to the results.
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| Oh no, it doesn't fit! |
- I started up the computer and kick-ass sound system, then navigated to Pandora.com to put on Bjork.
- While the cotton lint is probably up to 99% cellulose, there might be other weird crap on there that will prevent the cellulose from accepting the dye, like natural pectins, or oils from my greasy taco fingers. So, I scoured 1.50 oz. of raw cotton with 3/4 teaspoon of Professional Textile Detergent in 1/2 gallon of water in a cooking pot that I no longer use for cooking.
- With gloves on, because this detergent is brutal, I submerged 1.50 oz. cotton into the pot and squished it a little until saturated with water. At first it seemed like, holy shit, way too much cotton! With a few squeezes, I made it fit easily, with some room even.
Never mind - I turned on the burner and let simmer for about 15 minutes. The reviews on this detergent complain about fumes, so I was a little worried about doing this, but I didn't get any fumes. Or maybe I gave myself brain damage such that I can't smell anymore. Who knows. I pulled the cotton up and flipped it over with spatula, then smashed it a little with spatula, all the while trying not to pull too much on the cotton, which would end up making unusable rope.
- I decanted the water down the drain. It was really gross and brown, which lets me know that I wasn't just wasting my time. After letting it cool a bit I rinsed the cotton multiple times in a wire colander.
Everything's pre-measured and ready to go - As far as the dyeing process goes, I weighed out all of the dry ingredients ahead of time, while wearing gloves, eye protection, and a dust mask. Most messes come from being rushed, ill prepared, and disorganized. If you weigh out your stuff ahead of time, all you have to do is add your ingredients when you're ready.
- I microwaved a cup of water for a minute and a half and dissolved 3 tsp of urea into it.
- I microwaved a little more water, added 0.03 oz of dye to it, and made a paste out of it.
- I added the urea-water to the dye to make a slurry. If I'm being completely honest, I actually did all of this while waiting for the pre-wash earlier.
- When ready, I poured a half-gallon of water into a pot and dissolved 1/2 cup of salt into pot. The salt is supposed to bring the dye to the cotton fibers. It does not fix the dye to the fiber as some mistakenly believe. Think of it this way; you have this dilute concentration of dye. It's going to need some help locating the fiber. Salt is the match-maker.
- I warmed up the water on the stove. I'm doing all of this heating because it will help move the particles around, dissolve them in the water, and encourage chemistry to happen.
- Being careful not to splash, I added the dye slurry to the pot of water.
Half the fun is not having to clean up a big mess - In went the cotton. I pushed down on floating clumps and
agitated occasionally. I kept a plastic cup nearby as a spatula rest in order to prevent messes. - As the cotton was just sitting there in the dye bath, I dissolved 2 3/4 tsp of soda ash in warm water.
- After about 10 minutes, I pushed the cotton aside and added 1/2 of the soda ash-water to the dye bath.
- Another 10 minutes passed by before adding the rest. I pulled some fibers out intermittently, and noticed more of a golden color rather than deep orange, but 10 minutes later it seemed to be getting deeper!
Looks promising! - I stirred frequently for a half hour, trying to get those dye particles to meet the fiber, which would hopefully pop off the hydrogen from the hydroxyl groups in the basic environment. Yeah baby, drop those hydrogens.
- I dumped the dye bath, and then rinsed with cool water. When cool, I smooshed the cotton into a ball and gave it a good squeeze, then continued to rinse until the water was pretty clear.
- The pre-wash instructions were repeated.
- There was a final rinse and then I let it dry.
Direct Application Method
I'll discuss my results later, but *spoiler* I did not like my results. So I tried more of a tie-dye technique. My hope was that in introducing the dye to the fibers directly, I would get a more intense color. Anyway, I won't repeat the pre-wash directions because the are the same. By the way, I substituted Kate Bush for Bjork.
- I microwaved 4 cups of water, and dissolved 1/4 cup of soda ash in it.
- I poured all of that in a plastic tub, and after squeezing all pre-wash rinse-water out of the cotton, I soaked the cotton in the soda ash water.
- Meanwhile, I dissolved 3/8 tsp urea into 1/8 cup of water. I added some of that to 1/4 tsp dye and pasted it up. Then just said screw it and added the rest of the urea-water before pouring it carefully into a squeeze bottle.
- I squirted the dye onto cotton, then gave it a nice little massage.
- I put the cotton in a vegetable bag, and squeezed out all of the air, then put that in a sealable freezer bag. I left it in the backyard, hoping it would stay warm, although I'm not sure if exposure to the sunlight was a bad idea. Anyway, I forgot about it for 24 hours before washing it with PTD again.
Results and Conclusions
Neither of the methods produced Deep Orange. Unfortunately my camera phone doesn't convey the results accurately, so you'll have to trust me that the direct application method produced deeper, brighter, more saturated color, and it was also easier and less messy. It's so annoying, I'm looking at my dyed fibers with my own eyeballs right now, and the difference is so obvious. But they both suck, so maybe the true color not showing up great in these photos doesn't matter.
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| Top: Tub Dye Method Bottom: Direct Application Method |
Look at the lighter regions of the fibers to understand what I'm trying to convey here. The shaodows make the fiber look more saturated than they are. Tub dying produced more of an Orange Sorbet while the direct application almost exactly matches Orange Crush.
Yeah, yeah, it's still pretty, but it's not what I was going for. As it turns out, if I had done a little more research ahead of time, I would not have been so surprised. Leigh's Fiber Journal tried pretty much the same thing with the same materials and produced the same weak-ass results.
It's not like I went into this unprepared either. I did research and made careful calculations based on the dry weight of my fiber. However, the amount of chemicals I used came from recommendation for cotton items that have already been woven or knitted. Perhaps the core of a thread is not completely penetrated by the dye bath, and here I am trying to dye every single fiber, like an idiot. Why the hell do I want to do this again? If my hunch here is true, then that means I must increase the amount of dye per ounce of cotton lint. That seems a bit wasteful.
Another thing I learned recently is that soda ash doesn't just interact with the cellulose fibers, it reacts with the dye particles too, rendering them gradually less effective over a short period of time. Because of this, your dye bath will never be exhausted or clear as in acid dyeing in wool. You will always have some shitty dye particles left over. I don't like that, not only because it's wasteful, but because that seems pretty crap environmental-wise. The reason I have been so careful with measurements has been to eliminate waste as much as possible.
For the next time, I've got some changes I'm considering. Primarily, I need to use more dye. When I started this project, I calculated the amount of dye needed based on the dry weight of the fiber. I'm beginning to think that the amount of cotton isn't all that relevant to calculating how much dye you need. I have a hunch the concentration of the dye being applied to however much fiber you have is more important. This is why I'm also going to try to dry out the fibers between pre-washing and dyeing. In both the tub dyeing and direct application methods, the fibers were pretty well saturated with liquid before applying the dye, which may have caused the dye to be too dilute for good results. Why this doesn't seem to matter with pre-made articles of clothing or yarn currently evades me.
There were some challenges with physical properties as well. The clumps of cotton are difficult to break up without forming unusable rope. These clumps also form air bubbles which prevent the fibers from coming into contact with the dye. Moving forward to address this issue, I will be doing a craptacular job of combing the cotton into some rough roving-like logs. Hopefully this will make the fibers more available to the dye without me having to stir up the fibers and tangle them.
Everyone else in the world who felt like dyeing cotton lint would be neat-o is probably just going to be happy with their pastels, and that is fine. For me personally though, things are going pretty well in my life, so in order to keep my karma balanced, I feel like this is a pretty safe thing to stress myself out about.
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