Inspired Textiles

Botanical printing on paper is cheap and relatively easy. You can make it as simple or sophisticated as you want. You can use up natural dyes and small amounts of plant material leftover from larger projects and use more or less any paper you can lay your hands on.  Equipment Paper - this can be artist paper eg cartridge, watercolour or sketchbook: plain wallpaper aka lining paper, pages from old book, old envelopes, copy paper, repair tissue, kraft paper or thin card. In fact try anything that isn’t too thin or shiny.  Leaves and flowers - use the ones you know print well on fabric either because they have high tannin or give good colour. Leaves that have a good shape but are not good printers can be used as resists either tucked under a printer or when using a dye. Flowers especially daisy shaped ones work well.  Tiles or similar- I prefer to use leftover ceramic tiles cut to size to fit my fish kettle. However I know that Rita Summers aka Gone Rustic...

My latest silk noil scarf, it was firstly scoured then mordanted with Alum and dyed with logwood.  After allowing it to cure for a week I placed the redbud leaves in an 'artistic' line down one side. I thought a change from random placing was in order. After bundling around a wooden pole I steamed it for two hours. Because I used an iron blanket the leaves created a discharge shape as the iron reacted with the tannins in the leaves removing the dye.  Very pleased with the result.

Logwood and cochineal dyed silk noil. The range from dark to light is from the first dip to the last. The top piece is exhausted cochineal first then exhausted logwood second dip resulting in a lovely mauve. The plans for these lengths is to contact print some scarves.  More logwood and Cochineal dyed pieces  this time on silk habitat scarves and a silk lace collar that was in my late mother-in-laws fabric stash . This time I experimented with pre and post mordants of alum and iron.  Once again these will be discharged with leaves  

My latest set of botanical printed scarves. I predyed with natural dyes before contact dyeing.  This crepe de chine silk scarf was dyed with cochineal achieving a pale result before contact printing these lovely eucalyptus leaves. The resulting colour is a pleasing pinky grey. This crepe de chine scarf was predyed with logwood and then leaves from the same tree used this time they were not separated. The discharge effect this time is very dramatic. Overall very pleased with the result. This twill silk scarf was dyed in cochineal then contact printed with Acer leaves. For this silk noil scarf I dyed on logwood then used geranium, rose and continue leaves. Close up of geranium leaf.