Waste textiles generally have various colours. The largely discarded textiles not only result in huge loss of the limited natural materials, but also waste the colour in it which had cost substantial energy consumption and risked water pollution during dyeing. This work aimed to recycle both the waste textiles and the colours in them. In this research, magenta waste cotton fabric was firstly milled into powders with different particle sizes, and then printed as “pigments” onto cotton fabric to achieve new magenta coloured fabrics. Properties of the powders and corresponding printed fabrics were tested, including powder morphology, colour and fabric colour fastness. Powders with different particle sizes showed different colour depth from the K/S and L*a*b* value results. The K/S value of printed fabrics indicated that particle size did not have an apparent influence on the fabric colour. Furthermore, fabrics printed with 2, 5, 10 and 30 µm magenta cotton powders presented good fastness, among which the fabric printed with 5 µm powders possessed the best colour and rub fastness. This study demonstrated a potential new application for coloured textile waste.

废纺织品通常具有各种颜色。被大量丢弃的纺织品不仅导致有限的天然材料的大量损失，而且浪费了其中的颜色，这消耗了大量的能源并在染色过程中有水污染的风险。这项工作旨在回收废纺织品及其中的颜色。在这项研究中，首先将洋红色的废棉织物研磨成不同粒径的粉末，然后将其作为“颜料”印刷到棉织物上，以获得新的洋红色色织物。测试了粉末和相应的印花织物的性能，包括粉末形态，颜色和织物色牢度。根据K / S和L * a * b *值结果，具有不同粒径的粉末显示出不同的颜色深度。印花织物的K / S值表明粒度对织物颜色没有明显影响。另外，用2、5、10和30μm的洋红色棉粉印刷的织物具有良好的坚牢度，其中，用5μm的粉末印刷的织物具有最佳的色牢度和耐摩擦性。这项研究证明了有色纺织废料的潜在新应用。