Dyeing, printing, painting and Lockdowns.

September 10, 2021 in Research, Textiles, Other Artwork, Natural Dyes, Botanical Art

Finding myself with more hours at home what better way to spend it by expanding my investigation of local natural dyestuff and then turning it into something useful!

This started during the 2020 COVID lockdown and is set to continue for however long we find ourselves in this current lockdown. It has been difficult not being able to go to work, but my situation is certainly more more secure than many others, for which I am grateful. The bonus time is wonderful for this kind of exploration and fun with fabric!

The Exotics That Crept In

I started a solar dye with some of the abundance of Marigold flowers that were blooming in my garden. I left it for three days in the sun. Stupidly expecting yellow/orange, I got a lovely mottled green.

METHOD

100gms of yarn

about 1 litre of boiling water

150gms of fresh Marigold flower heads

Large sealed Jar

Sun

Marigold flowers

Sunflower seeds

I threw some sunflower seeds in my garden and they came up beautifully only to be all but gobbled down by snails or slugs. The few that made it grew large and flowered with big heads. Great food for my chooks I thought! When the flowers had finished, I was checking the seeds to see if they were dry and noticed that my finger tips were a brilliant bright purple. I remembered reading somewhere in my online research about sunflowers used as dye. So I apologised to the chickens who got lettuce instead and got out my dye pot!

METHOD

Approx. 100gms of Wool crepe soaked in alum water

1 litre of boiling water

Seeds from a Large sunflower head

Large sealed Jar

Sun

The colour took to the fabric almost immediately but I left it to steep for a couple of days. The colour can be shifted towards pinks (see above pic) with the addition of citric acid, or towards a blue/gray with the addition of soda ash.

Indigo Day

I had a day with my Indigo pot which had been sorely neglected. It had completely dried out and a strange bunch of crystals had formed at the bottom of the pot that I wish I had photographed! I was unsure if I would be able to revive it, my google search didn’t turn up much so I just thought nothing ventured nothing gained.

I filled it with warm water and whisked up the crystals until they dissolved back into a liquid. I then skimmed off any detritus that floated on the surface and began to gently heat the pot up to 50 degrees. I checked the PH and adjusted then added the Hydros. The pot came back beautifully.

I had a few pieces of cloth that I thought the printing and colour wasn’t great on so I thought they would make great mottled dark blue and green fabrics for my bags. For the green I dyed the cloth in Turmeric first.

A Bundle of Dyeing

I needed to expend my fabric stash and also wanted to try printing with some leaves, twigs and other vegetation that had been presoaked in mordant.

I had some beautiful medium weight wool crepe and some newly purchased fine wool crepe, as well as the final remnants of some doctor flannel that Mum had stashed for years.

With these experiments I was trying to keep some of the greens and produce colour variety. By introducing some dye material that had been soaked first in mordant, in this case iron or copper as well as unsoaked material it broadened the range of colours produced. I got browns from pale through to dark chocolate browns, almost black, some great purple tones and yes, green!

Painting

The exhibition schedule has all been postponed. Looking always for the silver lining, it has given me more time to paint and to prepare work in advance for when everything opens up again. Also time to check some other neglected things off the to do list, like finally joining The Botanical Artist Society of Australia and updating this website! Below is a few pictures of the painting I’ve been up to in the last 12 months. Some is commission work, some for teaching, some Exhibition work and some just for fun.

New Stock!!

April 13, 2020 in Natural Dyes, Shop, Textiles

I finally competed some making and I have restocked the shop with new Eco Dyed and printed Tote bags! They are all handmade by me, hand dyed by me and in some cases even hand woven by me.

I had some new fabrics to play with this time, a lovely vintage wool crepe and a vintage piece of wool flannel. The crepe being so fine, gave excellent detail in the printing.

I have also added pull tabs at the ends of the zippers to make closing and opening the bags easier. This is a late addition and didn’t make it to all the new stock.

Brown Handwoven waffle weave fabric with a rust stripe detail.

These little bags are great for keeping all your bits and pieces together while working on all the projects you have on the go.

They are all fully lined and each entirely unique.

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I have been working on some new patterns, a pencil roll and a different style bag. The bag is a small but not tiny shoulder bag with an adjustable strap, designed to be worn across the body. It has several pockets, one for the phone of course! I am still working on the lining pattern and how the zipper should sit.

The pencil rolls were of two sizes, a large 36 pencil roll and a smaller 12 pencil plus accessories roll. The larger will never make it, I suspect because they are laborious to make, but the smaller one is doable and would look great in the Eco prints.

Eco- Printing

November 30, 2017 in Natural Dyes, Textiles, Shop

I have always liked printmaking in fact it was my sub-major when I studied many moons ago. I have dabbled with eco-printing in the past but never really explored the possibilities, until recently.

Eco- printing is basically printing from nature, it involves laying down leaves, flowers, bark, nuts, twigs etc directly onto fabric or paper, folding or rolling it up securely and letting the pigments in the natural material transfer onto the surface. This can be done by boiling, steaming, solar dye or by applying pressure; hammering for example. The goal being to print or make marks on the fabric or paper. It sort of felt a bit like cheating at first, like nature was doing all the hard work, but the artistry comes in the way you arrange the flora, and roll or fold the fabrics. I will say though that it is even less of an exact science than dyeing skeins of yarn, results are not always predictable and happy accidents happen when you relinquish control and let the colours fall where they may! It is always exciting unrolling bundles of fabric because of the wondrous and unexpected results.

I have had my best results from rolling and boiling the fabrics.

I rediscovered a load of woven wool fabric I had purchased years ago when a local textile mill shut it's doors. I started to play with some printing on small pieces.

If the results were underwhelming I over-dyed the fabrics and layers of prints and marks began to build up. I also piece dyed the cloth in indigo, turmeric and native cherry; folding the fabrics to create interesting dye marks.

A collection of printed fabrics, over dyed with Turmeric, Ballart cherry and indigo.

I had trouble keeping the green, this fern print was particularly sucessful. I used really fresh fronds and boiled it for quite some time.

I experimented with Eucalyptus leaves first, and then I wanted to extend the ranges of colours I was achieving. I had a ball experimenting with different materials, mordants and ways of bundling the cloth.

Evolution of a Tote bag

After doing so much experimenting I had a pile of fabrics that had glorious prints and dye marks and I felt compelled to something with them. I came up with a pattern for a small tote bag some time ago because I wanted a small bag to keep my hand sewing gear and crochet needles together, I thought this would suit the fabrics I had created very well, so I made one up. I also discovered a load of weaving samples I had done some years earlier, some of which I dyed, they paired perfectly with the printed fabrics. Thus my Eco-printed tote bag was born.

Handwoven twill cloth, undyed and Eucalyptus dyed.

Eucalyptus prints

Mr 8 wanted to do some solor dyeing too!

Enlisting my Mother's help.

Some materials

Designing a label.

Bag labels.

Tote Bag, side view.

Tote bag, top view.

I did not have the heart to cut up the pieces pictured below, so I made a cushion out of it! I quite like the way the cushion front looks a bit like shrubs against a brick wall.

Cushion back

Cushion front

Visit my shop to get your one of a kind eco-printed tote bag. Just the right size to keep together your hand sewing equipment, cosmetics, jewelry or for travel.

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