Eco-Printing: Domestic technique of textile printing using the leaves of Rose Indica

Abstract

Clothing is one of the basic needs of human being; it has many functions like protection, identification, modesty, status and adornment. Human beings always loved to adorn their body and clothes by various techniques of value addition. Printing their clothes with colours are one of them. There are many printing techniques which can be used to print the clothes at domestic level like block printing, screen printing, stencil printing, hand printing etc. One of the latest techniques is eco printing. It is a technique of printing clothes by putting various parts of plants into the layers of fabric and steaming them for specific time period. Rose Indica (Rose flower) have many medicinal property, petal of rose flower is used in various edible and cosmetic products, but almost in all cases the leaves of this plant is discarded. In this experimental study an effort has been made to develop botanic print of rose leaves on silk and cotton fabric, standardizing the process and testing the colourfastness of the prints. Developed prints were tested for colourfastness to washing, dry cleaning, perspiration, rubbing, and sunlight exposure by following various ISO and AATCC standards, as no harmful chemicals were used, the developed products are also considered as eco-friendly. Results shows that the rose leaves printed cotton fabric develop clear print on fabric with bright colours; it also produces excellent colour fastness to washing, perspiration, dry cleaning and crocking but it exhibit poor colourfastness to exposure to sunlight.