Part 1

Abstract

Purpose In recent times, wool- and silk-blended fabrics are popular for creating glamourous products. Silk is blended to wool for creating more lustrous effect and to impart strength; on the other hand, wool is responsible for resilience, softness and warmth properties. Chemically both the fibres are protein-based, but the amount of amino acids is different. Due to this, the dye absorption behaviours of the two fibres from the same dye-bath are different. Wool is become darker than the silk fibre, if both the fibres are dyed together in a single bath dyeing process. Design/methodology/approach Here the wool fibres are first pre-treated with a commercial synthetic tanning agent (syntan) Mesitol HWS at three different pH values of 2.2, 3.2 and 4.2 and at three different concentrations: 5, 10 and 15 per cent. Then the syntan pre-treated wool fibres are dyed together with silk fibres maintaining the blend ratio as 80:20 by Telon Red MR, Telon Yellow M4GL and Telon Blue MRLW with sodium sulphate at three different concentrations of 10, 20 and 30 per cent. Findings The dye absorbency of the syntan-treated wool fibres decreased with increase in syntan concentration, whereas the colour strength of silk fibres increased. The resist effectiveness of wool fibres is increased from 6 to 59 per cent with increase of syntan concentration. So after the dyeing process, the colour strength of syntan-treated wool fibres are almost same with the colour strength of silk fibres. The washing fastness of the samples is improved, and wash fastness behaviour of both wool and silk fibres is almost same. Originality/value This paper gives an idea about the one bath dyeing process of wool- and silk-blended fabrics to achieve solid dyeing effect.