My First Eco Print

Inspired by the work of India Flint, I have begun to explore the natural dye process that she created. I placed leaves between pieces of mordanted fabric and wrapped them around rusty bolts I found in my garden. In a funny way I felt that the pieces of broken crockery and bolts had strong residual emotions tied to them from the people who used to live here. I couldn't throw them away, so now they will become part of the stories of these used fabric pieces, which also carry their own history.

I just kept the detritus in a pot on the back steps with shells from our trips to the beach.

Here's my first eco-print on cotton mystery blend with an alum mordant, a rusty iron bolt and eucalytpus leaves from the MOP garden. It was wrapped for a week.

Here's some dye I created from UBC Farm black currants.

These samples are wet, so the colour is a bit muted when they have dried. The folded samples were created with more rusty junk. The darker samples are unbleached cotton. They've just been in the jar for 2 days. I love working with rusty wire and wrapping the samples in wire. I'm also going to experiment more with using shells inside the wrapping. Fun times!