A group of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) final year students have created outfits using textiles fully made of natural ingredients in an effort to promote sustainability.
Almost 100 of these handmade textile creations using various techniques, including hand-drawn batik, tie and dye as well as shibori, produced by 27 textile design students, are currently on display at the Dyeco: Textile Eco Exploration of Natural Dye exhibition, which began yesterday and will continue till Feb 23, at the National Textiles Museum here.
Highlights include a shibori and hand-drawn kimono by designer Muhamad Faiz Zahurin, 24, using a deep purple dye extracted from purple sweet potato.
It took him between two weeks to a month to produce the dye, and the main challenge in producing it was ensuring that the ambient temperature was suitable to obtain the desired hue colour.
“The dye reacts with its surroundings, producing different hues depending on temperature. It becomes brighter when it’s hotter, and darker in cooler ambient temperatures,” he told Bernama recently.
Muhamad Faiz, who was chosen as the best overall student for the programme, said that he chose the purple sweet potato because not many have tried to use it as a source of natural dye as the crop was usually imported and rarely planted in Malaysia.
Best designer of the programme, Nuranisa Ag Anak, 24, chose black beans and morning glory as her main ingredients to produce her dye.
“I also used cream of tartar as an additive or mordant (colour binder) to replace the synthetic sodium silicate,” she said, adding that she used a trial-and-error approach in producing the dye.
Meanwhile, UiTM Creative Arts College Textile Design Department senior lecturer Juita Jaafar Manap said the programme sought to encourage and expose young designers to produce sustainable and environmentally-friendly creations.
“Actually, natural dyes have long been made and used since our ancestors’ time, so we are encouraging the practice to reduce chemicals and synthetics that may be harmful to the environment,” she said.
Juita said the use of natural ingredients makes managing textile waste easy, which would reduce pollution, especially water pollution that is frequently linked to the textile and dyeing industry.
She added that they were still looking into ways to improve dye formulas using natural ingredients from the aspects of durability before it has the potential to be commercialised.
Source: BERNAMA News Agency
