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Pineapple leaf is categorised as natural fibre resources hence creating an initiative to reduce usage of synthetic fibre. Pineapple fruits commercially have high demand in the industry causing the leaves discarded as agricultural waste. As an alternative to reduce the waste, fibres from pineapple leaf were extracted and dyed to improve the aesthetic value of pineapple leaf fibre by adding dyeing substrates using low energy consumption approach. This research is the first step towards more profound understanding on the nature of colourfastness properties pineapple leaf dyed fibre in addition on the improvement of dyeing behaviour properties. This method could further be refined by considering the production of textile materials, which can provide alternative on the usage of highly expensive silk fibres in the songket making industry. Two different methods of dyeing were used to analyse the colourfastness properties of pineapple leaf fibres. Pineapple leaf fibre was extracted using mechanical extraction. The fibres were manually extracted by water retting process and dried at room temperature prior to dyeing. Red reactive dye was applied to the pineapple leaf fibres using infrared dyeing machine and exhaustion dyeing machine. Both dyeing techniques displayed interesting colour findings, where infrared dyeing with golden shade and exhaustion dyeing with a reddish shade. Both dyeing techniques gave excellent colourfastness to washing with the moderate performance of change in colour.

Of late, dyeing fabrics with natural dyes have become an attraction because of its eco-friendly and less threatening disposition towards humankind. In the textile colouration industry, natural dyes play an important role because of the need for replacement synthetic dyes which have a great deal of tension with the environmental issues. This study focuses on the colour shade, colour coordinates, and fastness properties of dyed silk fabric from tagetes erecta (Mexican Marigold flower) using the water boiling extraction method. The dyeing was carried out using lemon juice as a natural mordant through the simultaneous mordanting method, using two different dyeing methods: infrared (IR) dyeing and exhaustion dyeing. The shades produced for exhaustion dyed fabric is light-yellow compared to the IR dyed fabric, which is medium-light yellow. These shades were confirmed with the CIELAB colour coordinates, L*a*b* values. The colourfastness to washing, perspiration, rubbing, and light of the fabrics were conducted to investigate the performance of the dye and mordant on the dyed silk fabrics. The colourfastness properties of the dyed silk fabric using infrared (IR) dyeing technique have better performance than using exhaustion dyeing technique.

Fibres from banana’s stem are abundantly available in Malaysia. This study focused on the production of woven fabric from banana pseudo-stem fibres. Yarn made of 100% banana stem and 100% cotton yarn were produced. Two types of retting techniques were conducted, which are water retting and retting using softening agent. The fibres were spun and weaved into plain weave fabric. All specimens were evaluated for yarn twist, yarn evenness, yarn linear density and selected fabric physical properties. The results obtained showed that banana stem fabric treated with softening agent has lower area density and higher thickness. Weft sample retted in softening agent has higher bending length and flexural rigidity than sample retted in water. This might be due to the decrement of yarn’s stiffness, which eases the insertion of yarn during shedding process. Weft sample retted in water has lower bending length due to coarser yarn and tends to break easily. It is found that retting banana stem fibres with softening agent affect the yarn linear density, area density, fabric stiffness properties and flexural rigidity of the fabric.