Dave's Notebook
Writing Practice by David Rickmann.
Yellow T-Shirt
The school has informed me that the child needs a Yellow T-Shirt for sportsday. Sportsday is tomorrow, and we do not own a child sized yellow t-shirt. I’m pretty sure there isn’t enough time to get one sent. Even next day delivery isn’t going to get her before 0830.
I suppose if it comes to it I can mask up and trawl around various shops in search of one, but I had things I wanted to do today.
I probably won’t do them, but still… So my first pass solution is going to be to take one of the existing plain white t-shirts and make it yellow.
Step One: Fixative
I’m going to try dying a white cotton t-shirt using Turmeric. Bear with me some or all of the following may be completely wrong. So, what I want to do is pre-mordant the t-shirt using a metallic salt. This way when I apply the turmeric dye it will form a coordination complex with the metal ion forming the coordination centre and binding the ligands (in this case the turmeric)
Lucky for me I’ve got a big load of sodium chloride here. So we can use that. What this means in practice is that I’m going to boil a t0shirt for an hour in salty water. This will make the dye stick better and also make the t-shirt more delicious.
It’s cooked, so I’ve taken it out and hung it up. I also licked it to test for saltyness. Don’t do that. It was INCREDIBLY salty.
Step Two: Making the dye
Turmeric is a delicious and very yellow rhizome. It’s an important ingredient in Indian and SOutheast Asian cuisines. It has long been thought to have medicinal properties, and it might do so, but none of these claims have yet been proven.
I’ve rinsed out the salty pot and added 1.5 litres of water and 6 tablespoons of turmeric and set it to boil for 15 minutes.
Then we dunk in our t-shirt. It’s currently looking orangey yellow. I think when I wash it out it will be more yellow than orange. Apparently the red component is because Curcumin (the active ingredient in this process) contains a sequence of conjugated (alternating single and double) bonds. The length of the conjugated section changes when exposed to alkaline solutions, and that makes it go redder. In fact you can take some damp turmeric dyed cloth and spray it with baking soda and it should go bright red!
I left the t-shirt in the dye for about an hour, rinsed it, popped it in the washing machine and voila. A new yellow t-shirt.