A book of umbellifers
I’ve always loved umbellifers and have lots in the garden, even allowing carrots to go to seed, so decided to do a whole book on them. I first sun printed a load on to fabric, then added more images, printing directly from the flowers with acrylic ink and also using decolorant to remove colour. As well as the sun printed fabric, I used some that I had previously dyed using low-emersion dyeing and arashi dyeing techniques. The rectangular pieces of Evelon were coloured using transfer dyes and plant material as resists. Finally, I added machine and hand stitching, beads, sequins and mother of pearl buttons. On the cover I used acrylic mat medium to attach a real head of hogweed.
Impressions of Japan
At the end of March, just in time to catch the beginning of the cherry blossom flowering, but before too many tourists arrived, I visited Japan. We spent most of the time in Kyoto, which still retains much of the flavour of the “old” Japan and which I found fascinating. One of the highlights was going to a flea market, held once a month in the streets around a large shrine. Here I found some fabrics, including a piece of silk, shibori tied ready for the dye pot and an old hand written journal which I later discovered to be a crop record on an estate. I decided I would make a photo album with a difference – using fabrics and some beautiful paper I had bought there as the pages. It is a double sided concertina book as I wanted the pages to remain as I had constructed them. Many of the fabrics I have purchased over the years, some recently through eBay.