Eco prints with the last of the green garden...

Today in Ottawa we had the first big snowfall:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 …but just yesterday I decided to gather some of the last “green” garden plant leaves before the serious cold arrives to carry them off.  Baptisia, heuchera  (“Palace Purple”), culinary thyme, sage,  vinca, and of course, that faithful green stalwart, the rose. And one new idea for a print: the roots of the borage plant. (More on that below).  

These were placed on a  fragment of pre-mordanted vintage kimono silk lining (some handstitches still attached in broken thread, o the stories in the cloth…) then bundled over a thick piece of cherry wood, stripped of its bark, and steamed as usual for about an hour. Here is what emerged:

The heuchera leaves gave  the largest prints and look purplish in fact. The surprise of the bundle was the colour from the borage roots: a clear and undeniable purple,  those dots. I read in Dominique Cardon’s book  “Natural Dyes” that the borage family worldwide can give purple from its roots – and indeed the herb garden variety does exactly that! But its roots are so tiny in comparison to the size of the plant with its paddle-like leaves. Some  details of ”Last Green”  :

The green print is from baptisia and the purple from both heuchera and borage roots (the dotty parts).

The panel

 Last note: Memories of summer green.

Some silk  scarves eco-printed with red cabbage (blues), tagetes (oranges and greens), coreopsis (rust-reds), sumac berries (rosy reds and dark pinks), chartreuse greens ( Black Eyed Susans). I edged the scarves with open stitches: no turned hems (except one), just narrow zig-zag or straight stitching.

Honour Roll for this post:

 Dominique Cardon, author of  “Natural Dyes: Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science” .

Next time: More adventures with eco printing eucalyptus.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tags: dye books, Eco Bundles, Eco Prints, mordants