Milk Protein Fiber

From the moment I heard milk can be made into textiles I never completely stopped thinking about it. How does milk, a liquid, become a warm soft garment. Well the process is I think the usual slurry that manmade fibers from natural materials go through. I maybe couldn't breathe when I first saw a video of rayon being spun, but now it's normal to me. You think, oh, how did eucalyptus become yarn? And it's the slurry. And the interesting difference is the part of the milk that is used is the protein, casein. 

I could not for the life of me find a milk protein shirt to buy, or anything like that, although now that I spin my targeted ads and videos and everything have adjusted. I was sounding out a Japanese wholesale website as best I could before hitting the barrier of trying to understand the strand diameter. 

Anyway, now I can find milk protein yarn all day.  For example, here is a commercially produced 100% milk yarn available to individuals: Bellatrista. 

I've been spinning it up night and day. First I spun it by itself as a test. It was gorgeous and lofty. It smelled a little bit like milk. Then I blended up a batt of materials I'd like to make a top from. Spun it. Blended another. Spun it. and so on. In my inexperienced hands it spins up totally differently from silk. Every time I reach a silk portion of the batt the yarn I am drawing thins out to well under 1mm. The milk appears to be gummier or grippier. I rinsed the garment while it was still in progress in order to see if the yarn changed substantially, so I could make any needed changes. I wasn't the most systematic with this but it did grow larger when washed. It also took many days to dry. That was very alarming and I am not sure how it will work for a top. 

My reasons for exploring alternative fibers are endless. Every time I use plastic I like it to be because it was the best and only thing for the job. Generally textiles do not need to be acetate, acrylic, polyester. The things I make should outlast me under archival conditions, but not in the ground. I also love color and in particular natural dyes that I make from really anything. Dyes work best on natural fibers, and natural dyes are typically so delicate in the first place that really only protein, cellulose, and nylon will display the beautiful colors. 

Saxon Blue on Milk Protein yarn

 

Another two dreams come true. The spun bundle is milk fiber, made from milk. It fascinated me as soon as I heard of it. Milk has a protein, casein, that can make things like a plastic. 

I don’t have exact details on the source of my roving but it’s supposed to use waste milk, not food milk, when there is more than can be sold. This came from World of Wool’s online shop. A UK shop with an absolutely charming address, every line cuter than the last:

Unit 8

The Old Railway Goods Yard

Milnsbridge

Huddersfield

West Yorkshire 

Everyone (online) says it’s like silk. At first in the sliver (chunk of fibers) I didn’t think so at all. Silk feels completely different from anything. However, spinning it up it slipped through my fingers so silky and maybe even easier to use. 

And then the second dream is-Saxon Blue. Natural indigo leaves are processed with sulfuric acid so that the indigo just strikes on the fiber with no vat. 

The reason I’m interested is that I am obsessed with color and love the indigo plant but not the color it gives. (On me) (I like it okay in shibori and jeans and everything but it doesn’t make me stop breathing like, oh, onion skins, undyed flax, sandalwood, really dozens of things.) 

So, Saxon blue is a treated version of natural indigo that fortunately has much less red in it and gives a purer cyan type blue. 

I was able to find it at the incomparable Grandma’s Spinning Wheel, an incredibly lucky find while we were in Tucson. The shop is I would say equal to the other best fiber shop I know, Dharma’s Trading, and it focuses on spinning whereas Dharma’s focuses on dyeing. 

I was just so thrilled to have it in my hands and also to be back at the dye studio in which I live that I dyed up a sample in a glass jar just to see, just for reference.