June Dye Plants in July

Through many dangers, toils and snares I have come since last post, dear Reader! Pinched nerves, spine miseries, carpal tunnel syndrome have kept me away from blogland and the garden for too long….But TG for physio and MRI machines…Still, I had to save my mobility and energy for family visits (new baby), a family trip to the Muskokas and a couple of eco dye classes that I gave in June. But I did keep taking pics of the June dye plants growing in nicely without me fussing; so here are some of them ( even though we are half way through July) along with a few samples of eco prints done by students in June:

Cotinus coggygria (R) with Rhus typhina (above R); nasturtiums in the wheelbarrow ( for hapazome) and dogwoods by the fence.

Front garden with the eco print star, red Japanese maple, probably “Bloodgood”

At this time of the year, this red leaved maple prints greens and purples. For complementary contrast, it is paired with yellow-primting sumac ( a student print).

And here is the Acer palmatum again, this time green, with red Coreopsis verticillata as colour complement, and yellows from baptisia as analagous colours.

Coiinus surprises in June, with red coreo for a bit of sizzle:

Iris always blue:

Tall bearded blue iris:

Baptisia australis: blue and purple blooms on the same plant! Fluorescent yellow from ththe leaves, deep blue stains from the little flowers:

This plant is NOT in my garden: Rhamnus cathartica (buckthorn) is an invasive non-native soo fair game for June foraging. Green from the berries, a trad dye plant in Europe. The local Buckthorn Police were happy that this Most Wanted on their list had been hunted down…

Japanese indigo ( Persicaria tinctoria): two overwintered plants that I layered and that consequently filled the whole planter: a plant with the will to live and leave a legacy; dye pot coming.

I still have loads of dried J. Indigo from last year, plus a 2014 vat that will get reactivated later this month:

The very well informed and generous mad dyers over at FB pageThe Wild Dyery have told us how we can get the vat going again.

Above are prints from a lichen solar dye pot that I started on my return from the Muskokas where I found huge rocks covered in umbilicaria (Rock Tripe) lichen, and which our B&B owners allowed me to gather.

The liquor looks like rich red wine at the moment; I shake it to areate the jar each day and I catch the dye drips on a piece of linen under the jars. The underside of the lichen is green when wet.

The umbilicaria, above. Not sure of the variety. FYI: The ethics of collecting lichen are in still in dispute. I feel comfortable having collected three small jars worth from over a large area on private property where a lot of the lichen has detached spontaneously from the rocks. The colour will fully develop in about six months.

A lovely print by expert linocut printmaker and teacher Deidre Hierlihy who took a little eco print instruction session from me this month; print on handmade Canal paper by Saint Armand. Smooshed blue aronia berries with Salvia officinalis (culinary sage) and rust prints.

One of my favourite wild flower scenes in the Muskokas: orange Indian paintbrush (talleja) backed by white clover and tall yellow hawksweed. Native peoples used the talleja for pigments according to Moerman ( see my refs page)

Last pic is of ME, dear Reader. I have been reluctant to show my face and be somewhat personal, but I know you perhaps wonder who is speaking to you and what I might look like. So here I am, dressed for the photo and right after I had my grey hair dyed…I cannot tell a lie, paper was not the only thing that got dyed in June… I got these great copper-oxidised earrings from the kids for Mother’s Day; the kids insisted I send them a pic with me wearing them; so I am daring to share it with you. The earrings were made by the very talented young jeweller artist Shane Cook, a grad of NSCAD. Behind me in the pic are some of my embroideries. A couple of these works will soon appear in a text book about modern textile art embroidery published by the Hong Kong Polytechnical University.

Next post will be in July!

 

Wendy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Works In Progress

Summer Solstice is fast approaching and my garden is almost ready to meet the longest day of the year! It has been a month (and some! ) of long days for me in the new garden. For what is an eco printmaker and dyer without her plants? It was a matter of the utmost urgency for me to rearrange the existing botanicals at least by the solstice so that eco dyeing and printing could resume…With the addition of some new plants and a few transplants from my old garden (though, sadly, most died in the harsh winter 2013 – 2014) I am almost there! So here are some pics of the garden, back and front, and the progress to date.

The front garden from the porch.

The specimen red Japanese maple (an eco dyer's delight) is underplanted with various shade lovers moved from the back garden which became suddenly very sunny due to the over-winter demise of a sugar maple. No more grass, just pea gravel now with field stones plus brick edging that will disappear from sight as the edging plants (for example: geranium, thyme, dianthus) grow in:

 

 

Along the sunny fence, I have planted old favourite cottage perennials, many of which give colour in the eco dye pot. More are to be added, like tansy and goldenrod.

 

 

Ferns, Solomon's seal, Siberian iris, daylilies, hostas, lupins, mint, variagated weigela and dogwood:

 

Before I made it my own, the gardens back and front were already rich with interesting native plants like Eastern cedars, Bloodroot, American smokebush (Cotinus obovatus) redberried elder, wood poppy, ostrich ferns, American bittersweet, goatsbeard, virgin's bower clematis, Virginia creeper. But as you know, one thing always leads to another in a garden (Didn't Adam and Eve set us some examples?) First, the mature sugar maple that died rendered areas of the back garden inhospitable to some shade plants. Then, installing a walkway in the front occasioned the transplanting of three mature evergreens- two yews and an Alberta spruce – which I couid not bring myself to chop down…We will see if they survive among other native plants installed along the shady perimeters of the back yard. Some images:

In the back, a native prairie grass, big bluestem, with rocks and vessel to break up the gravel “lawn”

 

Natives along the back fence: Pagoda dogwood shrub (back left) and Joe Pye weed (centre right) with fave green immigrants greater celandine (back right), sweet woodruff (under the dogwood) and hostas (foreground). I have planted the native celandine (aka wood poppy) elsewhere in the woodland area.

 

Native serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea or laevis, not sure which…the tag said A. canadensis but that is a cop-out name…)

 

Ostrich fern, Black Chokeberry(L), Solomon’s Seal and American smokebush(R), natives all.

 

Wonderful native sumac, Rhus typhina. With iron bedstead as Sugar Snap pea support and as eco print assistant later this summer…TBD!

 

The loud purple smokebush, brash and brazen, wonderful hybrid, fronted by enormous bloodroot, a native dye plant. Set beside Shlomo's garden candelabra, hand-wrought iron.

 

The Black Chokeberry in bloom, early May, beside red-twigged dogwood. Shade-loving natives. And another iron sculpture by Shlomo, “Peony” .

 

The greater celandine, green immigrant, which gives lovely greens and oranges when smooshed onto paper:

 

Smooshed thus:

 

In May, before some plants in this area were transplanted to the front garden. The whole candelabra – sculpture by Shlomo. The bedstead was garbage-picked.

 

“Canadian Pioneer” sculpture by Shlomo in the “woodland” garden of native plants alongside a few respectable green immigrants. (I am into native plant gardening but am no purist…Live and let live, in life, in gardens and in art, say I …Am I not also an immigrant, a stranger and a sojourner on this earth? )

 

Now for a little Non Native Gardening: I am growing these in pots for now:

Woad. Weld. Indigo. Japanese Indigo.

Just because. Reports later in the season!

 

 

This is the Persicaria tinctoria (Japanese indigo) in planters:

 

Native baptisia australis, AKA Rattlebush because the seed pods rattle when drying. This plant fixes nitrogen in the soil. I have put a weedy “Northern Lights” (bright orange blooms!)azalea close by to fatten her up…

 

Pods:

 

Coreopsis verticillata. Red dye from every part. Not the prairie version which is a native but a respectable relative. This image shows all that survived the Winter From Hell in Ottawa:

 

A hybrid of the threadleaf coreopsis above, in the front garden, too.

 

 

Good old tagetes, red, orange, yellow from the blooms and green from leaves and calix.

 

Precious wee pansies, even if they are not real Johnny-Jump-Ups. Blues and teals and turquoises in the dye pot.

 

Foxgloves and chives. Not sure about these in th dye pot…foxglove is risky!

 

Hybrid chartreuse sumac as companion to the red Japanese maple. Colour in the dye pot: TBD

 

Siberian iris (blue and green dyes) with pollinator plant, Canada thistle (L). Not natives but useful – to me…

 

Ostrich ferns, black chokeberry, Solomon’s Seal and smokebush, all natives. All eco-printable.

 

Sumac in June…growing nicely!

 

Red-painted bamboo poles as climbing supports for Hubbard squash in pots: nicely tied with copper wire by Shlomo (copper thrifted from a cable)

. Expecting the squash will cover the pergola while we are waiting for the grape vine and arctic kiwi to grow.

 

And after all this art in the garden what about art in your dye pot or at the printing press or at your bookbinder's bench, you may be asking.

This collagraph plate is part of my new series about a venerable elm that stood near my old house. I have collected photos of that elm for over 30 years. So now I have another way to say goodbye to our old home.

 

The “Elm” test print on eco printed paper:

 

Another collagraph plate created from some of my super-textured embroideries:

 

A third plate, also an “Elm” collagraph plate, yet to be proofed and printed. Report later. It has a kind of Wuthering Heights look to it, all windblown and broken…

Some of the prints from these plates will be on exhibit in July at the gallery associated with my printmakers’' group. Report later.

Next, on the topic of book arts:

“Unbound/Debride” is an exhibit of books and boxes by the Ottawa Valley chapter of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, held at the gallery of the lovely City of Ottawa Archives building.

Here are my eco printed box (L) and Shlomo's “El Anatsui” box (R)' with works by our colleagues Maggie McGovern (front), Paul Champion Demers (R), Beatrice Lourtioux (centre) and Holly Dean (back)

 

A funky selection: Genevieve Samson (L front) , Spike Minogue (L back), Shlomo (centre), Madeleine Rousseau (R) and Holly Dean (top). (This book by Holly appears in my article about book arts in the current issue of Fiber Art Now. See below)

 

My eco printed box and book with a coptic-bound, wooden-cover book by Paul Champion Demers:

 

The poster for the show:

 

Finally for this post, I mention two of my articles recently published: one about eco dyeing (with tutorial) in the current issue of the UK Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers and one featuring Canadian book artists in the current Fiber Art Now.

The work of Sandra Brownlee (winner of the 2014 Governor General of Canada award), Martha Cole, Holly Dean and myself appears in Fiber Art Now.

 

Happy gardening! It is a great joy. And it entails many other joys.

 

Wendy

 

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May Eco Colours in Layers

Blooms and green leaves aplenty in the May garden! How rich might they be in pigments, though, so early in the season? Especially if printed on linen, a cellulose fibre- which can be challenging to print if new. I was thinking that some of the colours would be weaker this season.

To get the best colours, I like to refer to the dye books for advice. The trad dye lit recommends a three-step mordanting process for cellulose fibres: alum, tannin, then alum again. I used alum acetate as the linen mordant – it needs no heat, only a soak overnight. The tannin came from fresh young sumac leaves in my garden.

I cooked a pot full of leaves with water to cover along with a length of white linen at 180 F and obtained a yellow liquor (a dye as well as a tannin mordant). I skipped the usual first alum soak and put the tannin-mordanted linen straight into the alum bucket (having used one tablespoon of alum to each half pound of dry-weight fabric in water to cover) Within half an hour, the linen had become bright yellow-green! Hmm. Had not predicted quite such a vibrant yellow!

The sumac tannin bath: yellow for sure!

The off-white linen dyed yellow-green, post-alum soak:

Layered with a selection of May blooms and leaves:

Dandelions and spent tulips :

…Canada Violets:

…lilacs:

 

Flowering Crabapple (Malus “Royalty”) – red leaves, deep pink blooms.

Purple Sandcherry (Prunus cistena):

Bundled into the steamer for an hour or so:

After the bundling: Diffuse marks.

Lots of blue-green teals with deep yellows on this layer; pinks and purples from the tulips; dark, dark blues from the tulip anthers; deep blue-green from the crabapple red-purple leaves; ditto, the sandcherry. The bright yellow is from the pink crabapple blossom: the dotty blues from the lilacs and teal blue from the violets. Way more blue than I predicted. Looking now for some shapes and forms to complement the range of colours obtained, I laid out more plants.

The linen was layered again with the same selection of plants plus some rose leaves:

 

This time, the fabric was torn into smaller pieces and layered flat in the steamer, in the same way that I eco print papers.

With this result:

..and with a stalk of Coreopsis verticillata (Threadleaf Coreopsis) – that is the bright red on the right over the sumac leaf that prints golden.

And now yet another layer, this time with more Coreopsis Verticillata to give precise form and brightly contrasting colour- the Orange-Blue opposition is one of my favourites. But first, just look at the red in the jR on the left here! Within half an hour, the coreopsis stalks in the jar had given up this much dye in a jar of warm water with half a teaspoon of alum acetate. On the right, the jar contains fresh stalks in plain water. The incredible red colour is from the leaves and the roots: later, when the blooms arrive, they too will print bright red.

Sumac and coreopsis for the third layer, to give colour contrasts and precise botanical forms:

With these results:

The first four samples were modified with iron before the final layering: that had interesting effects all over the piece. Note how the sumac print yellow-greens have become blue.

 

 

The sumac imposed its yellow over the base and made bright yellow patches when it came in contact with the lilac:

Primary colouration…

Compare the green sumac print (below) with the blue sumac print, iron-dipped, above. The next few samples were not treated with an iron dip.

Next post: Some of these same prints modified with iron and over-printed with sumac and coreopsis. Plus some embroideries, as promised last time, and lots of eco prints on paper using the same range of plants.

 

Wendy

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Black Walnut markings

Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) dye report.

First up is the info about the best walnuts for dye or ink. They are the green ones as they fall from the trees (here in Ottawa, that means October). This Fall, my three-year old grandson, Dylan, was my foraging companion. We took a nice collecting walk in a nearby walnut grove and gathered both green and black decomposing nuts.

We collected them “eco” style: picking them from under the trees, and not too many, for the critters need their winter supply. It was charmingly “eco” to get down as close to the ground as a three-year old, to examine and discuss every plant, every bug, every lichen-bearing stick; to take over an hour to collect one bag of walnuts, to choose more black squishy ones than hard green ones because the black ones squirted out icky sludgey goo on Nana…

By January, all the walnuts were black and frozen in our unheated storage. No more green ones that give the most colour. Well. We work with what is at hand, thus respecting another principle of an “eco” approach to natural dyeing. Four walnuts fit in my electric dye pot, a small ceramic slow cooker of one litre capacity. To get the most colour out of the black nuts, I thought I should make several dye extractions. In the end, four extractions were possible before the walnuts became sludge …or Nana's Squirting Goo…

For the first extraction, the walnuts were covered with water and simmered at 180 degrees for several hours, at least six, or until the liquid had reduced to about a cup. (One paper bundle and one small silk bundle were dyed in the first extraction)

The walnuts and liquid were then strained in cheesecloth, the dye saved, the four walnuts returned to the crock pot, covered with water, slow simmered for six more hours, then strained as above. The procedure was repeated once more, to make three times, I.O.W., until the walnuts disintegrated. The three litres of water reduced to just over three cups of black-brown dye. These three cups of dye were combined and strained once more. Then they were returned to the dye pot to cook down yet again until reduced to one cup of rich, thickish liquor, like balsamic vinegar:

So three litres of water, four squishy black Black walnuts and four reductions over a total of 24 hours in an electric crockpot..hmmm…I wonder how “eco” that is? At least the squirrels got the sludge.

So what to do with walnut dye?

The cheesecloth used for straining the walnut stew became…a rose by any other name:

Some watercolour paper first stamped with Oshiwa wood blocks and green acrylic paint:

…then washed over with the walnut reduction ( sort of a la Jamie Oliver):

 

…to this end: a typical antiquing look. The dye settled around thicker paint and created a drop-shadow effect, reversing the original white ground to green.

 

Some marks with walnut dye made with a paint brush, the dye painted on, dribbled on, splattered on, dripped on watercolour paper. The darkest marks come from a heavier application or a painting over of previous brush strokes:

 

 

Series below:

Marks made on wool in a 2011 walnut dye bath. Vintage wool panels were immersion dyed, bundled with Baby Blue eucalyptus, iron bits, acorns, corn cob, florist fern:

The euc printed acid yellow mostly but also patches of lime green and orange. Of course the deep browns are walnut dye.

Iron bits printed and so did the green florist fern:

I adore the walnut stripes:

A tad of orange from the euc and a clear green print from the fern. How well protein fibres print!

More stripeys in shades of walnut:

And a print from the dried Indian corn cob over which I had bundled this wool fragment:

Hope to make myself a garment from these panels of walnut and eucalyptus prints!

Last pic of walnut markings:

The brown dye seeped along the edges of the small accordion book above, and washed in over the Chokecherry leaves prints.

So far, I can use the straight dye liquid quite successfully as an ink, paint or liquid dye application.

But not yet sure about the right recipe for an ink thickened with gum tragacanth or gum arabic.

Wondering what would work for use with writing pens.

And what preservative might I need? Should I add alum?

Next post: Some local colour…

 

 

 

 

 

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Winterlude leaf colours

To wrap up this “Winterlude” project for January, here are a few more images of the recent eco printed papers together with some of the plants, pre- print, to compare the colours.

(BTW, these prints are on Saint Armand “Canal” brand, 140 lb., made in Montreal. Will post an image of the pad when I buy the next one. It is machine made from linen, cotton and denim rags. Their other papers are called hand made)

First, the Serviceberry.

A little accordion book was interleaved with Serviceberry (amelanchier canadensis) winter leaves of these sorts of colours:

Leaves laid near the eco print versions:

The eco printed book entitled “New World Scroll 2:Serviceberry”

The back of “New World Scroll 2: Serviceberry”

The back was printed with larger leaves.

Second, the dried tagetes blossoms. The calices print green or yellowy green and the petals print shades of grey. Not their summer orange!

Third, the fall-red Japanese Maple (acer palmatum). Greens, teals and blues of various shades are the eco printed colours. These eco prints were made in the fall.

Last note:

The walnut ink. Below is the third pot of water in which those four walnuts were cooked! Each one litre (four cups/32 oz) water was bolied down to about one cup. I think all the walnuttiness colour been squeezed out of those four fruits! I am collecting the boiled-down liquid in a jar, and when the last litre is reduced, I will tip the “walnut reduction” back into the crockpot and boil that down once more to one cup. Then I can tinker with the rest of the recipe!

I cooked the walnuts down until they were mushy. After each “reduction” the liquid was strained, the walnut mush was returned to the pot and covered with water two more times to make a litre. Some folks chop the walnuts up first but I did not bother.

Looking forward to the outcome!

 

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Winterlude Eco Dye Prints on Silk

To continue the previous dye report:

My “Winterlude” project combines dyeing with printing so as to extract plant pigments by immersing tied or clamped bundles/stacks of leaves with papers (cotton/cellulose fibres) and leaves with textiles (silk/protein fibres) in simmering/180 degree plant dyes.

Two summers ago, when I first began using natural dyes to print textiles and paper, I experimented with Purple Cabbage. See this image of silk crepe de chine below: No colour change, still lovely mottled blues. I had several pieces in my stash. What if I overdyed some with my winter leaves in a walnut dye bath? I love blues and browns and yellows together!

So to start with, I bundled the previously eco printed/dyed silk with the winter leaves over bamboo skewers so that I could snap them and bend them to fit the crockpot. I tied the bundle tightly with waxed linen thread, entered it into the dye pot and processed at a gentle 180 degrees for about an hour. I wanted the linen thread to make a lot of delicate lines of resist prints. You can tie linen thread really tight, too. (I got my linen thread at a leather work supply store. It is not easy to find and not cheap, either)

Here we are after the procesing and after the thread has been removed (I unbundled right away. No patience.) The thin, light lines on the bundle are the lines of resist prints. Of course, the waxed linen thread was dyed at the same time, its wax all melted off in the dye bath. The bendy bundle came about as a result of bending the bamboo skewers, as noted.

L

Now the reveal: The blues come from two sources: first, the acer palmatum prints:

Some blue patches, as in this detail below, are from the Purple Cabbage print that survived the walnut dye bath; the resist lines, now characteristic of this printing method, show beautiful marks from the walnut dye and linen thread:

Other views:

Resist lines: I LOVE the white tracery effect. This passage looks like something hand drawn, such a great contrast to the more diffuse prints and the colours.

Printed silk in front, printed linen at rhe back (more next post on linen) – the effects of the blue in the silk make a grey blue background on the silk, while the white linen, undyed previously, retains the lighter background colour. Both are lovely.

Walnut on Purple Cabbage blue mottles on silk, contrasted against the same leaf pigments on linen.

Below:

Part of the Winterlude collection, printed with winter leaves processed in dye baths.

Left to right:

1. Paper in coreopsis-tagetes 2. Linen in coreopsis-tagetes 3. Paper in coreopsis-tagetes 4. Linen in coeropsis- tagetes 5. Silk in walnut 6. Linen in coreopsis- tagetes 7. Paper in walnut

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

More next time – on vintage linen.

 

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Winterlude Eco Dye Prints on Paper

Outside, the snow is falling for the first weekend of Ottawa's Winterlude Festival. After some tropical days in the last weeks at plus nine, the Rideau Canal (World Heritage site) has finally opened for skating. From my window, I saw the first skater head over there…I was running for my camera to capture the textile interest not the skates: that conic Hudson Bay blanket coat! I still have a coat like that, FYI. Plus I have requested in my will to be buried in a Hudson Bay blanket…textile freak to the end, paying tribute to my adopted country besides saying a snide farewell to my favourite store, now that Target has bought it…

Meantime, winter finds me dyeing, ha ha.

This Winterlude, instead of skating, I got out my stash of fallen leaves saved from fall foraging walks in the local arboretum, all nicely frozen in the garage. My favourites are acer palmatum (Japanese Maple), acer saccharum (Sugar Maple, another Canadian icon), cotinus coggygria(Smokebush), alnus (Alder) and amelanchier canadensis ( my beloved Serviceberry). Only two are natives; in the arboretum, one finds leaves from trees that originate in many parts of the world. Besides these, I shlepped out from the big deep freezer, AKA garage, a nice pile of walnuts from a Black Walnut stand nearby: To dye, to print, perchance to steam – to paraphrase Shakespeare…

For a change, I had in mind to print the leaves on alum mordanted paper by immersion dye bath method rather than steaming the bundles under bricks as I usually do. I always use heavy weights to get good contact between plant and substrate when steaming. I place the bundles above the water on a rack supported by wee glass jars. So the plant-substrate contact in the immersion dye bath was the challenge today.

I had two dye baths:

1. The walnut dye bath:

Four frozen walnuts fit in the wee crock pot I was using, a brand-new $10 crockpot, purchased Friday last at a big sale at an affiliate store of the above Hudson Bay company, going out of biz …(Are there cosmic connections here – Target and walnut dye? )

I filled the pot to cover the walnuts and left them cooking, to come to 180 degrees. Then in went two bundles, one bundle with leaves on 140lb water colour paper and one with leaves on crepe de chine.. ( “Crepe de Chine” means China Silk – are we back to Target again? ) The silk bundle will be the subject of another post. FYI, the white on the walnuts is frost, not mould – though mould would likely print, also.

(After dyeing the paper bundle and the silk bundle, I cooked the dye down to one quarter its original volume of one litre/four cups water minus the displaced liquid…maybe one cup…Am going to try to make walnut ink.)

 

2. This dye bath below was left from the previous steamed bundles of paper, printed with coreopsis and tagetes. Lots of colour from the steamed bundles had entered water. (See previous post) I removed the jars and the rack for this project. About three inches of watery dye bath remained and to that I added some bits of iron. I processed a linen and a paper bundle; the linen floated, as you can see, because it was wrapped over a wood branch, while the paper bundle sank with the binder clips!

Next, the leaves I used in the bundles: from noon, around the clock:

Sweet Gum, Alder, Cotinus, Japanese Maple, Sugar Maple, Serviceberry, one Gingko and one Red Maple.

 

Paper next:

Sheets of “Montreal” watercolour paper, 140 lbs., soaked in water and alum acetate for several days (one day is really enough but no harm if longer) in a plastic plant tray, one quarter teaspoon alum powder to one cup (250 mls/8 oz) water. It is a rather soft paper and tears easily. But it takes impressions of a leaf beautifully so you not only get a coloured print but an impression, too. I suspect the paper might not have a lot of clay and binders in it, either. But that is research for another day.

After soaking the paper, I carefully tore it lengthwise and folded the strips into accordions of four and eight pages. I tucked the leaves in between the folds and inserted some iron bits in some folds to provoke darker prints from the leaf tannins. Then I encased the stacks of folded paper in various makeshift covers using plastic cut from ice cream containers, heavy cardboard cut to size or BBQ foil, clamping these over the paper sheets with small binder clips to get good contact between plant and paper and to avoid impressions in the papers from the binder clips.

Pics of the encasements: I tried foil, plastic and cardboard. I found the plastic and the cardboard were better than the foil at creating good contact and hence, clearer prints.

Aluminum foil, BBQ weight with binder clips on a four- fold accordion. This one went in the Coreopsis-Tagetes bath. Another four- fold went in the walnut bath. About two hours at a simmer, i.e, 180 degrees.

This is it, fresh from the dye bath with a bit of iron:

With the leaves after processing in the dye bath, before drying:

After drying:

This one below is an eight fold accordion, encased in cut bits of plastic, clamped with binder clips and it went in the walnut bath ( It fit in the little pot along with a silk bundle.)

This is how the papers above looked before being clamped:

After processing:

This four page accordion below was processed in the Coreopsis-Tagetes dye bath:

And here are three four-page accordions.

Top: Winter leaves in coreopsis-tagetes dye

Centre: Fresh leaves (florist ferns from a supermarket bouquet, no pic)

Bottom: Winter leaves in walnut with iron.

More Winterlude prints next time!

 

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Eco printed washing on a line in the garden

Well, I was stung by the comment from a viewer of my “Forest Floor” installation that it looked like a “line of washing”. Since making silk purses out of sows' ears is a textile artist's dream, I took up the “line of washing” challenge and applied it to a stash of eight old white tee shirts, almost ready for dusters and floorcloths…

An elegant Korean pear tree in my garden, mighty stressed by the drought (note the dead grass) and going into early leaf fall, became the clothesline. BTW, the green you see amid the dead brown grass is self seeded perennial geranium which makes terrific tiny ground cover if you cut it with the mower to keep it tiny.(The water you see is a pond off the Rideau Canal beside which my garden grows)

I gathered leaves from sumac, roses, geraniums, blackeyed susans, prunus cistena, maple, dried eucalyptus and red amaranth, along with whole long stems of early Golden Rod. I placed a mix of plants inside the tee shirt, bundled it over copper pipe or itself, and steamed the bundle for two hours. Lots of yellows and yellow greens! Some more contrast was in order.

Having learned afrom Amelia Poole (see blogroll) about the magic of iron as a colour value developer i dunked the bundle in water modified with iron liquor until the yellows turned to greys or sage greens or deep lavender charcoal grey. Punky-edgey!

Here are four of the tee shirts, straight from the steamer, no rinsing, and left to dry in the hot sun before being washed in Orvus Paste and well rinsed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Details of the prints:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun with repairing the holes in the tee shirts: some heavy free machine stitching to create a solid darned base in a neutral colour, then some threaddrawing in black with on top.

 

 

 

 

 

And some plants that supplied the colours:

Golden Rod

 

Golden Rod with magenta phlox a d white phlox beside one of my husband's funky RRR /Green sculptures, and hiding the tomatoes.

 

 

Black Eyed Susan with Scarlet Bee Balm and white veronicastrum (natives) and white, late-summer August phlox that came three weeks early because of the heatwave. Note the dead grass. While the flowers are very drought tolerant.

 

 

And one last lovely solidago, another drought-tolerant native

 

That's it for today, dear readers. Lots to look at but I was making up for my blog drought!

Next time, maybe more tee shirt restoration plus video from “Forest Floor”

Cheers

Wendy

 

Posted with Blogsy

Slow Clothworks: curing, washing and rinsing eco prints

Arlee Barr’s eco-print washing-out adventures have inspired this post! Thank you to arlee the unvarnished.

A Spring 2012 review of my inventory revealed a box of vintage cottons and linens, eco printed in June 2011 and left to cure, unwashed and unrinsed until now, some twelve months later. The long curing, I must admit, was more by accident than by design because for the most part, I had simply let my June 2011 dyed and eco-printed textiles dry in the summer sun then washed them out right after that.

(And should I also admit “gloating over my hoard” instead of the slight fiction expressed in the above sanitized “review of my inventory”? With 30-odd years of the virus Academia in my blood, Strict Honesty, as in “Unvarnished and Unembellished Truth” dies hard, dear Readers. We need to have our answers ready for the question: What isTruth?)

Back to eco prints!

What would be the effects of long waiting before washing out? Would they lose the colour? and if so, how much? Last summer’s posts detailed the post-washing results for many similar linens and cottons mordanted, dyed and printed in the same manner.This week, a “cured” collection of eight met an (overly-thorough?) half capful of Synthrapol and two tablespoons of Orvus paste in a washing machine filled with cool water, set to two rinses.

Note that I normally unbundle my eco prints when cool, immediately after printing or dyeing, thus, so far, I have not let bundles “cure” before unwrapping.

Mordants

The little stash was mordanted June 2011 by soaking (not cooking) in a classic (from the traditional dye lit.) three- step alum-tannin-alum sequence, with tannin from fresh sumac leaves, garden-gathered, simmered in water to cover, strained, then cooled. The alum was the food grade variety from Bulk Barn.

First was the preparation of the mordants: sumac-tannin mordant and alum, then the cool soaking period for each step of the mordanting – 24 hours at least for each -IOW, until I got around to the next step…

Indeed, the process was Slow. Could have been Slower, too, if I had let the bundles sit for some time before unwrapping.

Plant materials

The leaves for the eco prints were (variously) perennial geranium, Purple Sandcherry (prunus cistena) purple pansies, dried red rose petals (from rosebud tea), dried hibiscus petals (from hibiscus tea), willow leaves and sumac leaves. Most prints in this collection were obtained early in the season by steaming, while one 2011 leaf print was sumac-mordanted earlier then bundled and dyed in black walnut juice in September when walnuts were available. The sumac soak acted as both tannin mordant and as a light yellow-green dye, so the prints are all somewhat yellow-based. (FYI : A colour- free tannin mordant can be obtained as powder from Maiwa in Vancouver…In late fall, when I was out of fresh sumac juice, I switched to this second source of tannin..BTW, the tree barks I used in June 2011 were tannin rich too, but more on that in later posts.)

Here are some images showing the Before and After of the curing- washing-rinsing phases for this collection of Slow Cloths

1. Before: Willow leaf on linen (Black Walnut dye – note the bundling string marks plus the labels I wrote …you think you will remember the printing details? NO way…I write a quick set of material and process notes on a label and pin that to the cloth. Make your own labels or buy a box of manila ones)

After:

Detail : a willow leaf print…

2. Before: Purple Sandcherry with one willow leaf.

The Before pic shows a deeper colouration than After, I think, so I see some loss of colour even after a year of curing in a box in the dark.But can we say more mellowing or a patina than a loss…(see what I mean about the way we can varnish the truth?)

After:

3. Before: Purple Sandcherry and Perennial Geranium with purple pansy:

After: Some fading (truthful observation!) I think, but not major, and some “blooming” of other colours. That may have happened because another textile in the wash had been post-mordanted with iron.

4. Before: Sumac, hibiscus petals (dried), rose petals (dried), perennial geranium leaves and flowers. The dark speckles are dried rose bud petals which had pretty well pulverized in the tea. The pinks are from hibiscus, large dried petals from tea. Dabs of purple came from the geranium flowers.

After: A loss of the pinks and purples due to the iron in another textile washed with this one. Iron turns hibiscus pink to grey. I took a chance washing the collection together in one batch..so this colour change was a result I had anticipated.

5. A few details of another print, post-wash (no Before pic ): perennial geranium on sumac dyed cotton, I found little fading after washing. Amazingly strong print from the geranium.

More detailsl: layered prints.

The greens are from the P. Sandcherry which give both green and purple, depending in the time of year. Later in the season, post-June, I observed more and deeper purples, especially on silks. The darkest lace is from the rosebud tea prints. The vintage cottons and linens do indeed develop a kind of patina.

A last note from a lovely willow leaf, later in the season.

Next post: More on the eco printed stash as I prepare to select Art Cloth for the July show in Ottawa.

Cheers

Wendy