Fermented Clothing

I've had plenty of ideas for crazy fermentation projects, but making dresses from acetobacter produced cellulose certainly wasn't one of them. It is certainly interesting to see a fermentation byproduct that isn't consumed, but sadly if the "fabric" doesn't stay wet it becomes very fragile.

"He noticed that when oxygen got into the vats and turned the wine into vinegar, a slimy, rubbery layer grew on top.

This layer was cellulose, produced by acetobacter bacteria as a waste product when they convert wine into vinegar.

To ferment fabrics, Cass and his colleagues deliberately let vats of wine go off to produce cellulose.

And to get the shape of a dress, they lifted the layers of slimy cellulose off and laid them over a deflatable doll.

After each dress was complete, they deflated the doll and removed it, leaving the dress intact."

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/03/15/1872191.htm?site=indepthfeature&topic=latest

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