Rusting Away

As promised last week, I spent the weekend preparing an experiment in rusting. If you’ve seen my blog before, you may have seen my trials in this a while ago but this time I’ve used tin cans. I cleaned them up first, of course, then dunked the fabric in vinegar and wrapped it around them.

I also put a few leaves in between the folds of fabric to see if they’d leave an impression or some colour. Hand-picked from my garden, I used the leaves from dandelion, honeysuckle, herb Robert (Geranium robertianum), sycamore, ivy and lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria).

This is how they looked in the middle of the week:

I’ve kept them wrapped for a long time to try to get the best transfer of rust I could and to give the leaves time to do their thing.

After leaving them to dry on the cans, I unwrapped them, gave them a wash and hung them on the line to dry. This is how they looked then, bringing to mind the song about green bottles: “there were six rusted fabrics hanging on the line…..” I just hoped none of them would blow away! With the warm weather, they dried quite quickly.

Here are a few close-ups:

I love the colour that the rust produces on the fabric. It’s colourful yet subtle at the same time and the patterns it creates are unpredictable but always pretty.

The question now is, what am I going to do with the fabric? I’ve got a few ideas floating around in my head and some lovely lace to go with it, some embroidery thread, ribbon and maybe some printed fabric to layer it with.

I don’t know if I’ll have anything made by next week, I’ll have to see how I go, but I have got other works in progress which I’m going to share.

Have a lovely weekend!