Experiment with Eco dyeing 2 continued

If you saw my post last week, you'll know that I have tried eco dyeing again with leaves. I left the bundles rolled up for four days and these are the results.

I didn't get a full print of the leaves on my fabric, but there was some success with faint outlines.

This is the general colour of the fabric now:

Here is one of the faint leaf prints :

It's a stem of bramble with three leaves and you can just make out the shape, even the leaf veins, which I'm quite happy about.
Here's another :

One more :

And here's a faint ivy leaf print:

There was also some resist where I tied this piece of fabric with the string :

 I'm quite pleased that this second experiment turned out a bit better, but I might try again to see if I can get even stronger prints. I'm thinking of ideas of what to do with these pieces now they're done. I'm sure they can be made into something!

I also had a hair pin lace loom that can be used to crochet with free with a magazine last week and I think I may be becoming slightly obsessed with it. I've already done this:

I'll now be thinking of things to do with lacey crochet too!

For the next month, through June, I'll be doing 30 Days Wild with the Wildlife Trust so I'll be blogging about what I find, things I do and the nature all around. I'm looking forward to it and I hope you'll enjoy it as well.

Uniquely Me Tag

I was tagged by Natasha of The Happy Larkspur blog to do the Uniquely Me Tag. It's all about sharing what makes you 'you', the different and unique things about you. Tasha's post can be seen by clicking the link above. Thank you Tasha for involving me.

These are the rules:

1. Thank the person that nominated you for this tag and link to their blog (spread the love, basically).2. Write as many things that are unique to you as possible: these can be things that you do, say, like or have that make you different to other people or let you stand out. It can be what defines you as a person, a little thing about you that is just simply you or something little known that you think makes you up as a person.
3. Nominate up to 10 bloggers or as many as you like; there isn’t a limit.
4. You can take this tag as seriously or non-seriously as you like; you can laugh whilst doing it or feel contemplative: this is about you, after all.
5. After you’ve written this and if you ever feel like there’s nothing to you but what other people have already said and done, look back to your post and remember that it isn’t true.

So, what makes me 'me'?

• I love nature and wildlife. I've always enjoyed spending time outdoors and since I was a child I've loved watching animals. I think the natural world is important and we should all be doing more to look after it.
• I used to be arachnophobic but I'm not now. If I saw a spider when I was really young, I'd be running in the opposite direction but I've learned to live with our little eight-legged friends. I don't feel fear any more and catch them to put them outside.
• I love all the seasons. I enjoy seeing the changing colours and appearance of nature as the year turns. Every season has something to offer. (But I'm not fond of really hot weather in the summer!)
• I speak Welsh. I began learning when I was 23 because although I feel very Welsh, I wanted to be able to speak the language of my ancestors.
• My favourite colour is purple which apparently means I'm temperamental, unconventional, with a strong sense of individuality, highly imaginative, private, creative, a free spirit, idealistic, impractical and often seen as somewhat eccentric. I'll leave that for you to judge!
• I'm interested in space. I like to look at the moon and stars but at the moment the only constellation I can identify is Orion. I'd love to learn more. Every time I look up at the sky and try to imagine the distances between us and the stars, it makes my head spin. It reminds me how small we are and how unique we may be - we might be the only life in the universe - so wee should cherish our world and everything in it.
• My mother taught me to bake a Victoria sandwich when I was 3. I know all the ingredients without looking in a cook book and when a cake needs to be made, I'm the one who has to do it!

I've quite enjoyed doing this and am going to tag the blogs below. There's no pressure on anyone though.

JasmoonButterfly

MimiLoveForever 

The Textile Cuisine

Artcollisions

JS Burke

Sisters of the Moon

Experiment with Eco dyeing 2

First of all, my 30 Days Wild pack has arrived.

It's got wild flower seeds, stickers and a poster to record your wild adventure through June. All you need to do is one wild thing a day throughout June, bringing yourself closer to nature and wildlife. It can be as simple as looking at which wild flowers are growing near you, watching the birds, finding out which insects are in your garden or local park, or you can try creating a piece of wild art using leaves and twigs or whatever you find. I'll be trying to do something. I see birds and bees quite regularly in my garden, so I'm kind of already 'wild' anyway! 😉

After my experiment with eco-dying and trying to get prints of leaves on fabric, which didn't really work, I've attempted it again.

This time, I put red onion skins in the water:

I collected some leaves from my garden, not taking too many from each plant, and spread them on the fabric:

Then I rolled one lot of fabric around a piece of branch and tied it with string. Another lot, I folded and secured with clips and string:

I immersed them in the red onion skin water and then simmered them. They're out of the pot now but I'm going to leave them for as long as I can stand the anticipation before unrolling them (which will probably only be until I finish writing this. 😁 )

When they're untied and properly dried, you'll see the result. It'll be really disappointing if there's no colour or anything on them.

Anyway, while I wait for those, I'm doing some other things and here is one of them, some sketches for a project I'm thinking of doing with hares.

Experiment with Ecodyeing

I found out recently that you can get colour and even leaf prints on fabric by putting actual leaves in layers of fabric and immersing them in water, so I thought I'd try it.

I also put petals in with the leaves to see what would happen and a few rusty nails.

Sandwiching them between cotton fabrics, I rolled them up and tied them with string.

I put the bundles in my pot with loose leaves floating about in the water and simmered them for about an hour, then fished them out and left them still rolled up for two days. (I went to find something else to do while waiting. There's lots to keep me occupied! 😉 )

When I untied them, I left them to dry. This is what I ended up with:

There is colour on the fabric but no actual leaf prints, not even vague ones. I was a little bit disappointed 😞 but it was only an experiment. In the past I would have seen this as a failure and got really annoyed about it, possibly abandoning the whole thing, but now I see it just as a try out to see what effects I could get, a chance to learn and adapt my process. This may be due to the fact that I discovered Mindfulness a few years ago and I've been trying to practise it. It does seem to help to alter your outlook and has helped me when I've had setbacks in my work. 😌

I quite like the effects on the fabric but I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet. I may re-use the fabric to try dyeing it again with more leaves. When I did this, some of the leaves were quite dry. Maybe I should have used really fresh ones and maybe I should also use a different method of keeping the fabric in a bundle, to make sure the leaves are really tight against the fabric.

I'll see what happens with further experiments and update you on the results. 😊