Dyeing of Cotton Fabric with Natural Dyes without Mordant Usage Part I: Determining the Most Suitable Dye Plants for Dyeing and UV Protective Functionalization

Natural dyes are gaining importance in textile dyeing applications in recent years due to the fact many synthetic dyes are carcinogenic, mutagenic, and allergic. In this study, cotton knitted fabrics were dyed with extract solutions of 40 different dye plants without the mordant usage. Afterwards color efficiency and fastness values of dyed samples were evaluated. Dye plants that are able to give good color efficiency with sufficient fastness values were determined. According to the experimental results it can be said that for yellow color pomegranate peel and turmeric; for red color madder and quince; for blue color indigo; for green color myrobalan; for brown color white onion peel and catechu give the optimum results. Furthermore, it was tested whether ultraviolet protection effect could be obtained via dyeing with white onion peel or turmeric and it was found that both of these plants gave very good UV protection functionalization to cotton fabrics.