And we're back with another post written months after the project finished! The next few posts are going to be about the projects that I've worked on over the past year(ish) but haven't gotten around to writing about.
Before we go any further, I'd just like to say that this project did not cost a million pounds, but it sure felt like it took a million pounds to make! Confusing? It'll make sense soon.
I started this project as a Christmas for my mum and it was a lot of fun because I got to combine my love of the chemistry behind natural pigments and sewing. My mum loves gardening so I wanted to use some of the plants in her garden to dye the fabric.
The first step in doing this was scouring and mordanting the fabric I was going to be using. To scour, I used 1% WOF Soda Ash and 1% WOF detergent and soaked the fabric in it. Just don't do what I did and get the Soda Ash all over your hands as it is quite a strong base. I then mordanted the fabric using (I think, it was a long time ago) Alum and Cream of Tartar. This probably wasn't the most ideal mordant as it's more suited to animal fibres rather than cellulose fibres, but those were the things I had on hand (and I'm often wary about buying white powders over the internet).
Once that was done, I moved on to the dying process. This project was first inspired by this Instagram Reel so I decided to try bundle dying first. This involved laying the leaves and flowers (I mostly used Eucalyptus) on the fabric, rolling it up, and steaming it. Anyway, one burnt pot and several hours later I was left with a rather unimpressive-looking dye job, which more or less just looked like stained fabric. I'm guessing this was a combination of the plants and mordants that I chose not being right.
Scrapping this idea, I then decided to try the Japanese technique of Tataki Zome or 'Flower Pounding'. This involves pressing the flowers and leaves between two layers of fabric and hammering them with a steel hammer and a rubber mallet. I tested a range of different plants and ended up settling on a mixture of Achillea 'Coronation Gold', Tall Kangaroo Paw, Jerusalem Sage, and Seaside Daisies.
Once I was done with the seemingly endless amounts of hammering (get the name now?), I scraped off the flowers, set the dye with the iron, and washed the fabric. I then used it to sew a bucket hat and a blouse. This part was pretty simple, but it all started to get a bit tricky at the end as I didn't have a lot of time to finish it before Christmas on top of work, but I got it done in the end and Mum loved it. The colours have faded a bit over time, but the pattern is still there.
Overall this was a really fun project, but I'm not sure if I can deal with the amount of work it took to transfer the pigment from the plants to the fabric again and I think if I did try my hand at natural dying again, I would try some different mordants.
Song for this project is Futon Couch by Missy Higgins as it is a favourite of my mum's.
Alice xx
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