[Northkeep] Bleaching fabrics

[Jennifer Carlson]

I'm weighing in a few days behind everyone on this, but:

Linen is resistant to pre-analine dyes, which were invented in the 1800s.  
There were, however, dyes in period that linen would take, because we have 
household accounts mentioning linen in red, black, green, and blue.  What 
hues and depth of hue of those colors, we have no idea.

Linen is brown when first processed.  That brown will fade with exposure to 
sunlight, but the whitening is hastened by exposure to certain oxgygenation 
processes.  By draping linen over the grass early in the morning, when the 
dew and early sunlight cause the release of oxygen, our ancestors whitened 
the fabric.  In regions where linen was an industry, whole fields were 
rigged with frames over which the fabric could be draped to whiten.  This 
oxygenation reaction, by the by, is the same principle upon which the 
detergent Oxydol and Oxy-clean work.

Leaving linen, or any fabric, in the sun too long will eventually damage it. 
  UV radiation is bad for durn near everything.  White fabrics will yellow 
(as will gray hair and the lens of your eye, resulting in cataracts, so wear 
your sunglasses).  UV also will eventually break down the strength of any 
fiber.  Anyway, this is why the linen in the field was gathered back up 
after the dew had dried.

I had also once been told that soaking linen in soured milk would whiten it 
(similar to bleaching freckles with buttermilk, I was told).  Lady Livia 
Montgomery tried this, with smelly but otherwise extremely modest results.

Because modern dyes are more agressive in dying linen, they also can be more 
difficult to get rid of.  Use RIT color stripper and hope for the best.  I 
have had pretty good results most of the time, but have also run across dyes 
with a stubborn undertone, ususally yellow, that just won't give up the 
ghost.

Also, even purely white linen has a color cast to it, either blue, pink, or 
yellow.  In the US, we tend to think of the blue cast as being "whiter," 
while in other places the pinkish or yellowish is seen as being "pure" 
white.    That cast cannot be removed.  Trust me on this.

The fabric Toinette was thinking of that turned a pale brown when bleached 
was SILK.  Silk is naturally a pale straw color.  To get white silk, you 
have to dye it white.  Bleach removes even white diye, and will return silk 
to its natural color.

Since wool is in general white to begin with, bleaching wool hasn't come up 
in my reading.  RIT colore stripper will take the color out, but alkali 
(which bleach is) is very hard on protein fibers like wool.  The fabric will 
smell like a bad perm (also the result of alkali on protein, in this case 
being your hair and not the sheep's).  So be sure to neutralize the reaction 
by giving the wool a vinegar water bath afterwards.  And the alkali will 
also "burn" the loose fiber ends on the surface, so bleaching or 
fiber-stripping may leave the wool feeling scratchy.

And just to round out the fiber circuit, the period method of bleaching 
cotton was to drape the fabric over fires fed with sulfur.  So in addition 
to smelling like brimstone, the process was toxic.  Cotton, however, 
responds beautifully to chlorine bleach, so don't knock yourself out.

Talana,
Whose job has been ugly this week, who has a nasty head cold, and hasn't 
gotten nearly enough e-mail time for several days now.  Hope the above is of 
use.

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