FIBER: Natural Colored Cotton

Cotton can come in many colors in the wild. However, over time people have breed cotton to be pure white to facilitate dyeing the cloth and yarns produced. This parallels the process of breeding sheep which naturally have spotted or brownish coats to be pure white so that the yarn can be dyed any color as need allows.

The American Indians used the natural colors of cotton in their weaving particularly in South America and the American Southwest. You can obtain seeds to grow your own natural red brown Indian Cotton from the Amerind Seed Preservation Society Native Seed Search

The plant breeder Sally Fox took the native American strains of colored cotton with tend to grow short and bred them with the longer Egyptian cottons to make a naturally colored commercial cotton that had a marketable fiber length for machine spinning. She has produced a whole rainbow of shades which are natural to the fiber, thus no dyeing is required.

This has several implications. First, no toxic dye process needs to occur. Secondly, the color is fast as it part of the actual fiber, not a dye. This makes the production of naturally colored cotton more ecological, cheaper, and much healthier for people with chemical sensitivities.

Fox kindly sells small lots to hand spinners and weavers as well as big companies like Levis. She recently won a prize from MIT for her projects.

I've spun her fiber and found that, in addition to color, it has to color a very soft hand. If you think cotton is stringy then spin some of Sally's soft cotton.

The colors darkens with boiling to shrink the fiber, but stays fast over time. You might want to give it a try.

Lil

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