LEAVES ON SILK

I think it was a year ago, while working in the Grande Prairie Library, that I ran into one of those books that opened my creative perception. Gave me new possibilities for experimenting with fabric and colour. The book was Eco Colour. The author, India Flint, had done her research (for her master's degree in fine art somewhere in Australia) on  extracting colour from eucalyptus leaves. Supposedly there had been books written on these experimental studies as far back as the Victorian era in Australia. Eucalyptus was everywhere as debris, so why not find some use for it? India Flint was able to extract several hundred colors, each obtainable by varying the degrees of temperature, accompanying metals,etc. So I took some cheap white silk, ripped a yard in half, and tried doing the print & steam technique. All I used was a rice steaming pot now dedicated, and some leaves which were soaked for 24 hrs previous. Here's what I got. Now I will not stop with eucalyptus. It was given to me by my sister and she works as a florist. Eucalyptus is not endemic to Canada, so I will continue with other debris. My goal is to experiment, learn about results, and sew these one of a kind fabrics into garments. See what happens.

The tie dye one above is a beautiful thin linen table cloth that I purchased in goodwill for $3. What you don't see, is all the clovers and ferns that are a woven pattern in the white linen. Very subtle. The tie dyeing was my first. I just boiled down the pressed leaves, and that is the colour I got by submerging. Not nearly as beautiful as the silk reaction to the plant. But I want to tie dye more using a different colour.

The linen below the steaming package is what I used for the tie dye above.