A Comparative Study on Fastness of Silk Fabric Dyed with Reactive Dye and Metal Complex Dye

Poor colour fastness in textile products is one of the major sources of customer dissatisfaction and leads to fading or bleeding of textile colour by various type of external influences like water, perspiration, rubbing etc., during textile manufacturing and in daily use. Moreover, poor colour fastness may also prove hazardous due to the bleeding and subsequent penetration of the dye molecules and metal ions into the human skin. This article has tried to find a solution to mitigate the poor colour fastness to perspiration particularly for dark shade on silk fabrics. This paper shows a comparative analysis of different type of fastness properties of natural silk fabrics and their strength loss while dyeing with reactive and metal complex dyes following different national and international standards like ISO, ASTM standards etc. In this study, it has been revealed that colour fastness to perspiration of reactive dyed silk fabric against all types of fibres is comparatively better than that of metal complex dyed silk fabric. Percentage of strength loss is not affecting the subsequent processes of weaving preparatory and weavability of dyed silk yarn. The colour fastness to perspiration is notably achieved by using reactive dye fulfilling the customer’s demands.