Exploring a Sustainable Natural Crude Dye for Dyeing Wool Fabric from Melia azedarach Leaves: Characterization and Colorimetric Assessment

Natural dyeing for textiles gains interest for several reasons like sustainability, local economy and cultural heritage. Numerous plants are found to have the ability to dye and bestow functional properties to textile goods. The leaves of Melia azedarach (M. azedarach), a plant with countless medicinal properties, have been chosen to investigate such capabilities for wool fabrics using mordants (alum, ferrous and copper salt) in pre and meta-mordanting methods with minimal water. A variety of satisfactory colors were achieved with moderate to good fastness properties even without mordant, which indicates sustainable dyeing and the substantivity of the dye. Chlorophyll and carotenoid are found to be responsible for color creation and their existence in dyed samples is detected by characterization techniques. Meta-mordanting produced the poorest color by forming lower substantive metal-dye chelates in the dye bath.