Finishing of Jute Fabric for Value-Added Products

Gray jute fabric has been bleached by three different processes—gray-bleach, scour bleach, and gray ambient bleach—to produce white fabric. These processes produce different optical and physical properties. All the bleached jute fabrics were dyed with direct and reactive dyes. Bleached and dyed jute fabrics were padded with finishing formulation comprising resin, softener, and nonionic surfactant, subsequently dried and cured. An evaluation of the bleached jute fabric reveals that the finishing treatment resulted in very good creasing characteristics without much deterioration of tensile strength. There is no alteration in color of the bleached and dyed jute fabrics before and after the finishing treatment. Washing fastness of the finished fabric is also good. Therefore, this combined finishing treatment can be applied to jute fabric to produce diversified and value-added jute products.