This has been a fabulous year of explorations fuelled by the #our52weekproject on instagram, for which I chose #52weeksofbotanicals.

I deliberately chose this broad category as the umbrella to work under as most of my work revolves around botanicals simply because most of my world revolves around botanicals & I doubt that I'm going to leave the world of botanicals anytime soon.

My December explorations have looped back around to mono prints, but this time on muka paper. ha ! printing botanicals on botanicals & then stitching them seemed like the perfect experiment & it was.
Not all of the results are spectacular but that doesn't matter a tot as I've worked out a lot even with the limited work I have done.
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I now know I can monoprint successfully using acrylic ink on muka paper.
The muka paper has a rough side & a smooth side & this affects the quality of the print with regards to line sharpness & detail.
I now know I can machine or hand stitch on the muka paper.
I successfully used both polyester thread & cotton thread for machine sewing & cotton embroidery thread for the hand sewing.

For the last week of the year I decided to do a little experiment with free motion embroidery/quilting on a reject kawakawa monoprint that I’ve had pinned to my wall for most of the year.
I have never done free motion embroidery before, nor quilting for that matter, so this was equal parts exciting & terrifying.
It was a lot of fun & now my mind is in hyper drive about the possibilities so I’m looking forward to coming back to this later this year.

It’s been a fantabulous year of botanical exploration & it has been absolutely amazing watching the other participants really hone their skills over the 12 months so if you’re on IG go check the hashtag #our52weekproject for everyone’s posts & specifcally #52weeksofbotanicals for mine.

New year calls for a new project & I'll let you know what that will be soon xx

Ordinarily my 1st blog post of the month is a recap of what I’ve done in the previous month, especially things relating to my year long exploration of botanicals & I really look forward to writing it.

​Ordinarily I would tap out a few wise words & upload pretty photos & push publish but honestly I’m using the demise of my iMac (cue sobbing) as my excuse for not doing so.

I like this word ‘ordinarily’ I think it’s old fashioned & quaint.

I also like honesty 😏

Well let's just say I'm not giving up hope of ever being successful at 'eco bundle dyeing' on silk, however, I won't be rushing out & buying more silk !   

I made a dye bath out some raurekau bark I had in the freezer. I found in the past the this bark will often yield a lot of colour so I made it fairly weak.
I wrapped up the silk again, with a few different leaves & seeds inside & used the same method as I did with my 1st attempt. 

I got beautiful yellow kowhai seeds prints & a couple of lovely subtle leaf prints, so I cut this section off.
Alas, again virtually no colour on the fabric.

Spurred on by the success of the ferns I wrapped some into the remainder of the cloth, wrapped it up again, tied it with string & popped it in the dye bath again. 

This time I got beautiful fern prints & lovely relief pattern from the string but again didn't get colour right to the centre.

So that's it, my experiment with silk & bundle dyeing is over.
Next adventure with plant dyes will be an immersion bath.