Cloths part 3

Time for the last set of plant print experiments! I wasn’t really inspired to attempt any nice photography, so I just popped them in the flatbed scanner for you.

Sheet from last batch as well as the “mystery fabric that doesn’t take any colour” (I think we’ll just call it Homer from now on) had a bath in aluminium acetate then some powdered madder root and a handful of dried hollyhock heads, and the sheet, previously dyed brown from longterm exposure to celandine, had a short bath in – well, celandine. Not a lot of improvement, so I wrapped it up with some fern leaves. Nothing much happened for weeks, so I steamed it. And if you squint you might just be able to see a weak fern pattern…. Mostly, what I got was a bunch of brown, mouldy fabrics smelling like a cow’s a*se.

The raspberry leaves did print nicely – from the top side of the leaves only, the fabric covering the back of the leaves have 0 change. And, well, the lupine leaves? yawn…..

I actually think I’m giving up on this. Rose leaves gave me nothing. Alchemilla mollis, nothing.

I may however, decide to try with paper, after reading this blog. Tell me it isn’t cool!

http://wendyfe.wordpress.com/tag/eco-prints-on-paper/

Of course, I’m rapidly running out of leaves, so this will be for another year. Tomorrow I’ll go check if any more of these are still up (and no, I can’t imagine they’ll actually print red)

Liquidambar styraciflua

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Plantefarvning på stof

Tid til flere eksperimenter inden sæsonen er slut! Lupinblade og bregner rullet ind i bomuld. Forsøgte mig også med rosenblade – ingenting skete. Faktisk skete der absolut ingenting med nogen af mine forsøg ved at blot lade stoffet ligge med planter i og holde det fugtigt, så jeg prøvede at dampe/koge et par stykker. Hindbærblade virkede ligeså godt som egeblade, men kun fra forsiden. Tørrede stokrosehoveder var derimod forbavsende gode, glæder mig til at farve garn med dem.

Og der sker lige nøjagtig ikke ret meget, ud over at det begynder at stinke efter en måneds tid, så nu tror jeg ærlig talt ikke jeg gider prøve igen lige foreløbig, slet ikke på bomuld i hvert fald.

Cloths part 2

Time to open the rest of the packages from August 14th. The first package was opened on August 21st and now awaiting further experiments…

The sheet on the right was previously washed with soda, cooked with sumak leaves and was soaking in water with iron while rolled up with celandine. The pillow case similar although no tannin before but soaking in water with oak leaves while printing.

Discoveries so far:

  1. Oak leaves = nice clear prints
  2. yellow flowers = vague yellow blotches
  3. Sage leaves = absolutely nothing. Maybe a pale shade of yellow?
  4. Celandine leaves in a heap = again, turns brown when sitting too long
  5. Put cloth in bucket of whatever = only the outside layer takes any colour at all.
  6. My mystery cloth just lost whatever I put on it previously and didn’t take anything from the leaves it had been rolled up with.

None of these cotton rags were properly mordanted, which is the next process I’ll be trying to see what the difference is. Tannin and aluminium acetate, some with sea water and aluminium. Some with iron as well, before or after. But I probably won’t get to actually dyeing them until next summer. Rhubarb leaves will be on the menu as well.

Another set is brewing – hoping for prints from lupine leaves among other things.

Funny thing though, the celandine dyed sheet is brown – but when put into water again, the water turns yellow.

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Plantefarvning på stof

Tid til at åbne de sidste pakker jeg præparerede d. 14. august. Den første omtalte jeg d. 21. august, den er nu tør og afventer yderligere eksperimenter på et eller andet tidspunkt.

Der kom ikke så meget ud af det, svaleurt giver stadig brun ved langtidsfarvning og kun egebladene lavede print på stoffet. Det ene stykke stof mistede de print det havde inden og er nu næsten “rent”! Jeg ved ikke helt hvad det er lavet af, det er en slags kanvas og virker ikke syntetisk, måske hør?

Cloths part 1

Well, part 3 really. Since I already showed off some cloths from last year and blabbed about the new project in another post.

So, I made notes. I did not number those notes and match them with my buckets however…. lahdeedahh. Some I remember from description, but…

I was going to leave them all there FOREVER, but in less than a week some had taken on A LOT of colour in the fabric itself, the print part I couldn’t see of course. What to do? Open or leave them?! ARGH!

Ok, so I opened ONE. Seven days in. Hot weather (finally). And did recognize it after opening, so the registration is back on track.

This cloth had previously been soaked in red wine with a horse shoe on top. Then bundled with tansy, daylilies, something sunflower like and sage. Cold water bucket. I also poured in some exhaust from the tansy test halfway through, I think that’s what’s giving the olive green with the iron and also being the outer layers of the package. There goes my theory about tansy not reacting with iron!

I learned that you don’t get clear plant prints when submerging the cloth in fluid. So next thing would be add flowers to damp cloth and then not to use more water. I should probably go read my book….

In the mean time I’ve been cooking the rest of my cottons in tannins and aluminium acetate. So they should be ready for further experimentation. Next up if I come across old bedsheets etc. will be seawater and milk, and I’ve got some dried sumac bark from last year. I’ve also aquired some texts on dyeing with clay and rust among other things, can’t wait to dive into them. Bring on winter, see if I care! (Yeah, I said that last year too and spent the entire winter being sick = no crafting, but I’m not planning on a repeat). Silk fabrics, cellulose fiber yarns – lots to try! As well as trying out the procedure on wools for comparison with ordinary mordants. There’s no end to the experiments, somebody find me a huge grant?! 😀

Funny how boiled oak leaves left to steep for a few days, look and smell JUST like black tea. So I wonder if that’s the smell of tannic acid? I didn’t have a sip though 😉

 

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Plantefarvning på stof

Kort fortalt, jeg tester alle mulige måder at få plantefarve til at hæfte på bomuld. Garvesyre fra rødvin, egeblade, bark, aluminiumsulfat, havvand, mælk, jernopløsning. Første test var 4 forskellige spande med blomster og salvie rullet ind i lagner og puttet i spande i drivhuset.

Efter en uge hev jeg første bundt op og har bl.a. lært at man ikke får tydelige print af blomsterne ved at have stoffet liggende i væske, der skal man nok sarte med fugtigt stof og så snøre blomsterne ind og lade være. Jeg kunne også studere lidt først, men det er typisk mig at bare prøve noget. Jeg burde nok tage og få læst min bog om emnet! Jeg har også fået fat i nogen e-bøger om at farve med ler, rust og andet sjovt. Vinteren kan bare komme an og gerne med en del mindre sygdom end den sidste, hvor jeg sagde det samme og så blev det bare til nul spinding! 🙁

Jeg skal også have spundet nogen forskellige plantefibre og teste med dem, måske silkestof? Nogen som vil donere noget kedeligt hvidt bomuldsgarn? 😉

Kogte egeblade som har trukket et par dage lugter fuldstændig som og ligner sort the. Gad vide om det simpelthen er garvesyre der lugter sådan? Jeg smagte dog ikke på det….

Jeg lader stoffet tørre mellem hver behandling, jeg håber det sætter sig og ikke bliver vasket ud i næste omgang, men de kloge påstår jo at det kan lade sig gøre på den måde.

Little hedges


For a few years one end of our property (and the neighbours’) have been flooded in winter due to clogged drains in the fields. Most have been fixed, but eventually most of our hedges way up in the garden died because they were standing with their feet in the water followed by two very frosty winters.
So this summer we’re working on a new drain all the way from the garden to the low end of the farm where the big new drain is running. No point in getting a new hedge if the garden is a swamp 6 months out of 12! But the garden is much too windy without one. A hedge that is.

It’ll probably be a couple of years (they say) before we see the actual effect, so in the mean time I’ve decided to make new hedges, using what we already have, spiraea and ribes. For the lilacs I’ll have to see if any of them have sent out shoots that I can dig up and nurse a bit in a pot. I think I’m a bit late in the season to use cuttings?

Now only remains to be seen if I can actually remember to nurse them all through the winter…. At least if we don’t get frost, I have a self-watering greenhouse!

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Temporary home while the digger recuperates

Eco friendly dyeing

At the moment when I plant dye I use the old recipes, the usual metal based mordants etc. to get some experience under my wings. But just because it’s done with plants, all these chemicals doesn’t also make it natural. “Wear a mask as you measure up the powder, gloves too”. In fact chrome, used in many recipes, is illegal here now for regular use, you can’t buy it. It can in fact alter your DNA!

So to go all the way, I’d like to switch to natural mordants when possible (meaning that of course I’d still like to get the range of colours I’ve been discovering), so I’ll be doing a bit of research on that. I know India Flint does it, her book Eco Colour is very inspiring. The other day a fellow blogger introduced me to another one written specifically about using Native American plants and methods rather than Continue reading “Eco friendly dyeing”