Crazy New Textiles: Part II

A wedding dress made of milk fibers.

Another new-fangled idea that came up in my textiles class (which, by the way, was done as of about 12:37 today) was milk fiber. Yes, fibers made out of milk that are then turned into clothes. Crazy, right? If you know me AT ALL you know how i cannot go a day without an ice cold glass of milk straight out of my fridge and also how particular I can be about the milk that I drink. I know; it's weird. My obsession may have something to do with a complex I developed as a child with my mom always talking to me about how crying and milk are synonymous with being a failure which may also relate to the fact that I rarely ever cry, but I digress. Milk Yarn is made from milk protein fibers. To make it, milk is first dewatered, i.e. all the water content is taken out from it and then it is skimmed. New bio-engineering technique is then applied to make a protein spinning fluid. This fluid is suitable for wet spinning process through which the final high-grade textile fiber is made. While spinning, a solvent is used by most of the manufacturers and micro-zinc ion is embedded in the fiber which gives it the characteristics of being bacteriostatic and durable. It combines the advantages of both, natural as well as synthetic fibers. It can be spun alone or with cashmere, silk, spun silk, cotton, wool, ramie and other fibers to make fabrics. At this point, it is still very expensive to make milk fiber which in turn makes it expensive when we buy it in products. Unfortunately, they have yet to come up with the technology that allows ice cold milk pouches to be constantly replenishing themselves in the seams (AKA straws) of the clothes.
Anywho, just thought I'd share. There are so many amazing things going on in textiles right now; it's kind of crazy and it's kind of boring but kind of interesting too, yea? I've definitely saved the best for last, so stay tuned. This will literally make your skin crawl.

*all statements I made about my mom earlier in this post are false and meant for humor only.