Well I have never done any 'proper' Eco-dying/printing, so this was a first for me. I will admit that I can admire good eco-printed fabrics, but it's not something that I am drawn towards. However, when I saw the sample pieces - wow!
We began by trying to print with different leaves. Given the year and the fact that we are at a reasonable altitude in North Cumbria, there wasn't a lot of choice leaf-wise! Some worked well - others less so and some not at all. That information fed though, into our final pieces. To be fair I was delighted with mine. While the samples were steaming we had to wait, so this allowed a quick introduction to using onion skins to dye fabric using the Shibori technique.
One of the benefits of doing a workshop is that a lot of the preparation by way of scouring the fabric - so it is ultra clean and receptive to the plant pigments, and any mordanting required - to help fix the pigments, was done for us. Not to mention the advice and guidance of Maggie, to ensure our final pieces were successful.
 |
| A selection of leaves... |
 |
| Tightly bound to ensure maximum contact - T shirt yarn - new to me - what a find! |
 |
| Variable results - the piece is symmetrical as the fabric was folded around the leaves ot contrast printing from the top and bottom of the leaf. Raspberry and Geranium sp. leaves from the garden were successful and Maggie kindly brought some Eucalyptus leaves ...Sycamore leaves worked well too - at this time of year. |
 |
| Shibori with onion skins...the hand left piece was wrapped at an angle around a plastic tube, the middle piece was by wrapping around a thread and pulling it down to make a 'scrunchy' type form and the right hand piece was a mixture of pegs, tied in marbles and general scrunching up. The left hand one was dulled with an iron solution and the bleached blotches are lemmon juice. |
 |
| My final piece ....the 'target cloth'. |
 |
| Detail - with stomata texture. |
 |
| This was the print made onto the 'iron blanket' ...which in many ways I prefer. |
 |
| Detail. |
What to do with them next is the question ...
No comments:
Post a Comment