Adventures in Eco Printing

We've been having very hot weather lately which is great but it's been too hot really to steam plants for two hours in the kitchen.  And I don't really want to bring my little two element burner outside and do it there either because I would be in the hot sun.  So I decided to put some silk scarves on rods (make bundles) and put them in ziploc bags.  Then I put them on my deck in the afternoon.   I figured that the deck is hot enough to steam my bundles.  I went out and turned them over once in a while.   Below is a photo of my plant material on top of the silk scarf.  You can see I put a layer of cling film on top to keep the colours from bleeding through when they're rolled onto the rod.

Here's my set up on my kitchen table.

And here are my bundles on the deck.  You can see the steam inside the bags.

So after a week or so I opened them up with great excitement.  Here is the plant material all stuck to the cling film which made it easier to clean up.  I did decide though to pick it all off so I could put it in recycling. 

I unrolled the bundles and hung them to dry.  I left the scarves for a few days to cure the colours.  Today I washed them out and here is one of them all dry and ironed below.  I'm really pleased with how it worked out.  The colours are very strong.  I would say it worked out as well as with the steaming pot.  I just need to fine tune my layouts a little but I really like the results.

And here's the other one below.  I think I could have opened them sooner than a week.  We had hot weather (around 30 C) pretty much every single day.  Red onion skins certainly work very well.

I now have a few more silk scarves rolled into bundles on the deck which have different plant materials and done with alum instead of vinegar.  I'm looking forward to seeing the results again.  Stay tuned!