Trudie invited us to try eco printing in her garden on a fine day in the summer. Eco printing is a way of transferring the colours from plant materials on to fabric or paper. We just did fabric.
To give the best chance of colour transferring to the cloth Trudie boiled our chosen fabric in an alum mordant before the big day. Natural fabric works best and our wool, silk, linen and cotton were waiting wet when we arrived.
We used rose, maple, walnut, eucalyptus, oak and bracken leaves as these are known for giving the best results, but other leaves are always worth a try. The leaves were soaked in a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water for about an hour.
Whilst we were waiting we enjoyed coffee and talked about our upcoming exhibition which will be on 10th to 16th September in Woodbridge.
At least one of us, Trudie, will be showing a piece including eco printing at the exhibition. After our workshops she bravely printed on to a vintage cotton nightdress, with stunning results and she is currently embellishing it with embroidery and applique. It will be worth seeing.
Next we dipped the leaves in a ferrous sulphate solution (1tsp ferrous sulphate to a litre of water) before laying them on the fabric . An easy step to forget, I found in the excitement of arranging the leaves on to the fabric. Its not easy to get a pre planned result. I guess you’d learn from loads of experience but I think the excitement of the unexpected is a reason for eco dyeing. If you need to know what you’ll probably get eco printing may not be for you.
We rolled the fabric with its arranged leaves, very tightly round a piece of dowel the right size to fit in Trudies steaming pot . The colours transfer through the rolled layers so if that was a concern. … if you were hoping for a defined pattern…. then cling film was laid on top of the leaves.
To get the best result we tied the fabric round the dowel really tightly with string so the contact between the fabric and the leaves was the best it could be.
The rolled parcels were steamed for 2 hours while we enjoyed a long lunch. Sorry no picture of the steaming which took place in Trudies living room on her coffee table….she is a kind and generous friend.
We took our bundles home and had to wait for 2 days for the excitement of unwrapping. It would have been nice to have pictures of our faces as we unwrapped, but we don’t, only pictures of some of our results. Which sadly I’m not able to arrange interestingly due to my limited web posting skills!
We enjoyed our day and some of us may Eco print again!
Marion