Technical Workshop - Making Pastes and Dyes for Textiles
On Tuesday 23rd 2014, the Contemporary Textiles class were shown how to make certain pastes such as discharge, Devore and Indalca. Last year, we had to inform the technical staff if any pastes were low or empty. This year, we were able to learn how to create our own pastes, so this not only saves time, it also informs us of our responsibility in both care and usage of the pastes.
Vicky, the university technician who runs this workshop, informed us of important things like health and safety (example of gloves when using the fume cabinet in photo), how to work in the fume cabinet safely (e.g. wear hand and mask protection, what powders and dyes are bad for your lungs if you breathing without wearing a mask), what exact measurements required to create a paste, and how long can pastes be stored in.
As for disposal of old pastes, they had to be put into these bins so they can be recycled with care.
Later, we were shown the two-tone Devore dye process - making a two tone dye using a procion and acid dye mix. The fixatives were made separately from the dyes, so that the fabric can be washed in the fixated-filled water before the dyes are added in together. Afterwards, the fabric is then fully immersed into the dye bath. After about 30 minutes, the dyed fabric is taken out to be rinsed with cold and hot water before being placed in a washing machine to be thoroughly washed with detergent. upon showing us the result, Vicki told us that the fabric can be dried naturally or in the tumble dryer.
This was an interesting and enjoyable learning experience that I would liked to use for future project development.