I'm using winter as my excuse
I have little to show for my efforts … even my efforts were little
It's now August, best not to hold your breath !
I'm paying lip service to my project I'm using winter as my excuse I have little to show for my efforts … even my efforts were little I have started several things & finished nothing . . .
It's now August, best not to hold your breath ! what is this 'idea' that is swirling around annoyingly in my head ?!?
i know it is to do with repair, hence the patch thing i know it is to do with damaged environments i know it is to do with plants & ecosystems i know it has an international application i know it has to do with plants indigenous to an area i know it has to do with balance currently, it is manifesting as small cardboard circles used as the backing for warps of wool & wefts of muka & that is all I know … I decided to dedicate the weekends of May to my first foray into botanical dyeing of fabric & muka using a soy milk mordant & NZ native plants. Having used kawakawa leaves for my explorations of direct printing I was very excited about the prospect of obtaining colour from them & by using home made soy milk as a mordant to pretreat the fabric & the muka*. Week 1 involved collecting the leaves & making the dye bath. We trimmed some overhanging branches & I cut the leaves off, but initially left the leaf attached to the stem. I put them in the pot, covered them with water from our rain water tanks & gently heated them to a simmer. I let them simmer gently for an hour, turned off the heat & let them steep overnight. The next day I strained the leaves thru a sieve, removed the stems & cut them into smaller pieces & repeated the heating/cooling process. Week 2 saw me dyeing 2 fabric samples & some muka. I cut off 2 x 10cm square pieces of fabric (1 linen & 1 cotton/linen blend) & 2 lengths of muka from my pre mordanted stash. I strained the dye bath through a sieve lined with a double layer of muslin to remove as much debris as possible - a very fine residue still remained but I decided that was ok. Plopped the fabric & muka in & gently heated it to just below simmer & held it there for an hour, turned off the heat & let it cool down in the liquor & steep for 2 days. I removed the swatches & the muka, hung them out to dry & left them in the shade for a week before I rinsed them in water with a small amount of a mild soap & then hung them to dry. Week 3 OMG the excitement was palpable ! This was the day of truth; would my dye bath have enough colour in it to dye a larger swatch of fabric . . . I transferred the dye liquor to one of the larger stainless steel pots so as to accommodate some larger pieces of fabrics. I submerged my linen fabric in 1st, gently heated it & held it just below simmer for 1 hour, stirring it every so often just to keep it moving in the dye bath & turned off the heat & then left it in the dye bath overnight, removed it the next morning & hung it up to dry in the shade. Next I submerged a larger piece of the cotton/linen blend fabric in the dye bath & repeated the same process. Honestly, this actually was really exciting because I deliberately cut the fabric large enough to enable me to use it for future projects. Week 4 time to see if there was going to be any colour left in the fabric & muka after rinsing & drying the fabric. I am extremely happy with the colour of both pieces of fabric & the muka. The colour of the linen is slightly lighter than the cotton/linen blend fabric but both are what I would call a light mushroom colour. I have a series of works in mind for these pieces of fabric but I'll wait a few weeks longer to see if the colour changes at all. I have ironed both pieces just to see whether or not direct heat caused any changes & it didn't. As you can see from the photos the muka has retained it's beautiful silky sheen. Although I like the colour of the muka I've not been instantly inspired by it, so will just keep it close by & watch to see if it changes with time. All in all, May has been a calm, unhurried & pleasantly pungent exploration of obtaining colour from one of my favourite iconic NZ native plants which has been thoroughly enjoyable. A lovely way to spend autumn days & now I'll probably wait til spring to I get my dye pots bubbling away again. *The primary resource for the method I used is 'botanical colour at your fingertips' by Rebecca Desnos which I bought as an ebook
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Hi, I'm Sally
I'm a fibre artist who loves botanicals - especially NZ native plants |