A new creative journey has been embarked upon!!🫣. I am very excited to share it with you and I hope you will be as mesmerized by the whole process as I am🌿🍃
In July 2023 I attended a Botanical Dyeing course in Johannesburg, presented by Ira Bekker (Botanical Nomad) and in August 2023 I attended her Botanical/Eco Printing course in Pretoria.
This has opened a whole new world of dyeing and printing for me (remember, I dye MOST of my own yarns with mainly commercial dyes, and have done lots of fabric printing in my day). This is now not only a new rabbit hole, but a rabbit warren and I’m very excited to head down it!! 🐇🐇🐇. Follow me…
At the first course, we were taught how to dye with plants on a sustainable basis and without using any toxic mordants, only iron water. It was incredible to see the colours develop during the process, some of them totally unpredictable and others what you would expect! I left the course venue raring to start my own journey and experimentation process!
Once I was at home again and had a free weekend, I experimented extensively with the botanical dyeing on wool, handspun cotton as well as handspun linen. I made tiny skeins of each to sample with and made some very nice reference cards for the future. I dyed with leaves, flowers, bark and seed pods. There were many pleasant surprises and some results which would not warrant another attempt – which is why one should experiment!
Once I had my samples done, I dyed 50g skeins in my favourite colours. I dyed some Merino, handspun cotton and handspun linen, with the intention of weaving them all together in a project.
Aren’t these colours amazing?
At the end of August I attended another of Ira’s courses, this time Eco/Botanical Printing. This process also uses plant material from your garden and environment, and, together with iron water, you make prints on fabric (wool, cotton, silk, linen etc) and other receptive items.
The following photos are from the course day itself and not only my work.
It has taken me more than 2 months to get back to attempting botanical/eco printing at home, because of travels with family and friends.
On Saturday 11/11/2023 – appropriate* because it is Remembrance/Armistice/Poppy day – LEST WE FORGET – I started experimenting with Eco printing (using sustainable plant matter and iron water, all eco-friendly) on silk scarves and a Merino sock blank (a knitted piece that will get unraveled to knit a pair of socks).
*Appropriate because we must not forget how fragile and valuable our world is and we must protect it as well as each of us can.
I scavenged some plant matter from neighbours (karee, thorn tree and maroela), and with other plant matter I had foraged in the garden I did some printing.
I was not as scientific as with the botanical dyeing (horrors🫣) so I cannot definitively say what worked and what did not. Next time I might be more scientific, but suffice it to say I had such fun and produced some amazing pieces!
I also made an indigo dye vat in the morning, and overdyed some of the pieces. Again, I was NOT scientific about it so I don’t really know how long the pieces were in the vat for. Two pieces were left the natural brown colour and are stunning!
What is amazing though, is the difference in blues of the 3 pieces I put in the indigo vat. One was quite a vivid blue, the other a deeper blue and the third one a grey-blue! I was so pleased and am extremely happy with the outcome!
So beautiful ♥️