Having been on a day’s workshop at Hawkwood College with Babs Behan, on which we used flowers from the garden to print a silk scarf and being pleased withe results, I got rather carried away back home. I mordanted silk with alum, cotton and linen with aluminium acetate which gives much better results on plant fibres. Here are just a few of my results. I sprayed everything with vinegar before rolling up and all bundles were steamed.
I also printed some papers for my project on Nature Journaling with Roxanne Evans Stout. The first three are paper – mulberry paper, Japanese rice paper and Nepalese mixed fibres.
I used dahlia and rose petals, hollyhocks, mallow, anthemis tinctoria, calendula, French marigolds, some elderberries still on the stalks, which I crushed, elderberry and rose leaves a, purple sage, purple carrot, thinly sliced,hibiscus and ordinary teabags, plus a small quantity of iron filings.
Japanese silk which has a flower motive integrated into the cloth.
Cotton sheeting
Another piece of Japanese silk. The circular blue marks are from the purple carrot, a spectacular result.
Linen. Here the leaf marks are quite noticeable.
