Printing on a Heat Press

This month I've been taking a course with Jane Dunnewold eco printing on a heat press.  I find it works more quickly and quite differently than the traditional steaming method.  Here's a photo of the press I got.  It's a Siser 15 X 15 inch press.  You can see I made teflon covers for the platens.

 Here are a few of my first prints on watercolour paper on the press.  The colours and the prints are more intense I find.  This is coreopsis and smoke bush leaves on the left and coreopsis and rose leaves on the right.  The smoke bush was not quite ready for printing yet.

I have lots of coreopsis in the garden and they come out bright orange...  The background here is herb robert.  Thanks for having a look!

More Textile course results

 I finished module three of my course with the Wild Dyery.  This one was about making print pastes with natural dyes and printing with them on fabric.  Click on any of the photos to enlarge.   Here is a photo of a sample with some of the colours:

We also made iron mordant paste and overdyed with yellow.  I used osage orange to overdye in this case.  The iron mordant paste became very dark.  I would use less ferrous sulfate next time I do this.

 

Here's a photo of some gelli plate prints I made with the natural dye pastes.  This is after they were steamed to set the colours:

Here's a photo of a screen print which I printed with a design I cut out of paper.  The colour is a combination of madder and chlorophyl:

 

I created another smaller screenprint design and printed it on white cotton fabric and on a previously eco printed fabric.  These are madder and chlorophyl,  the final colours after steaming:

As an aside I've been experimenting with treating cotton with soy milk to increase its ability to accept natural colour.   Cotton seems to have similar properties to a protein fibre after treating it with soy milk and leaving it to cure for a while.  I had read about this but after I bought Rebecca Desnos' book Botanical Colour at your Fingertips I learned more.  Up until now I've only been able to get grays from black beans on cotton.  Here is a photo of some cotton and silk on the line after soy "mordanting" and using black beans and osage orange as a dye.  I still had to use alum to get the deeper blue/purple from the black beans:

Thanks for having a look and hope you're enjoying some of your own natural dyeing experiments! Leave a comment below if you have any questions.

Fibre Fling 2021!

This year Out of the Box, the fibre arts group I'm a member of, is having our Fibre Fling show online for the first time.  We used to have it at Kitchissippi United Church every April but things are of course different this year.  Here's the poster with all the info.  As you can see I happen to have a photo of a piece I made on this poster too although it's not in the show.   I have some of my hand coloured and sun printed fabrics in the show and one wall hanging featuring my eco printing for sale.  It's the one I had in the Stittsville Library show.   The show will be starting this Friday.  Please go and have a look at not just mine but all the interesting artwork!

Eco printed apron

 Last summer I did a course with the Wild Dyery online.  For the Leaf  Print Cloth course I made an apron out of all the eco printed samples I made.  They are mostly on silk noil.  I've printed plants from my garden and area such as rose leaves, buckthorn leaves, strawberry leaves, maple leaves, iris petals and a Bachelor's Button flower.  The pink is from natural madder dye.   The browny pink is from avocado pits.   Here's a photo of the apron spread out so you can see all the fabrics.  Click on it to see the details.  I added embroidery on some areas.

Here's a photo of the finished apron.  I'm quite pleased how it turned out:)  This was part of my last assignment of the course.  Thanks for having a look!  Please leave a comment below.

More shopping bags made of recycled packaging

 Here are a few more bags I made by sewing together used food packaging.  I just cut off the zip part and then sewed the packages together.  I was concerned that the straps weren't sturdy enough but I seem to be able to carry quite a lot in them.

I hope this inspires you to make something similar!  If you do let me know in the comments section below.

Recycling plastic

This winter I've been thinking a lot about keeping things out of the landfill and incorporating materials I have into artwork and other projects.  I seem to accumulate a lot of plastic food packaging and I've kept it because it's colourful, because I don't want to throw it out and I wanted to make something with it.  Here's an example of some of the packing I have.

Below is a grocery bag I made out of eight packages..  It's lying on its side.  I've cut off the zip part and then just sewn the packages together so each side is double layered.  I've cut out a square from each side for the bottom and have sewn the two layers together (quite hard to turn).

Here's another angle below.  It was quite heavy plastic so I had to use a jeans needle.  This bag is quite large and will hold lots of groceries.  My next step is to make a handle for it:)  Stay tuned for more...

Eco print cushion

 This month I made a cushion with eco printed cotton fabric and onion skin dyed cotton fabric for the borders and back.  It measures 14 inches square and the plants are coreopsis verticillata and strawberry leaves both from my garden.  The fabric was soaked in tannin water first and then the print was made.  I was going to embroider the print but decided to leave it as is.  Thanks for having a look:)