Eco-print Fabric Journal

Last few months I've been playing around with dyeing fabrics and paper with leaves, India Flint style. The muted salmon pinks and browns along with vintage lace and vintage found objects, old jewellry, form into a book that has an aged and worn look about it (much like myself). Here is the result, an embellished journal made entirely by hand stitching with a long-stitch binding.

What I love most about this book is the combination of recycling objects from nature with objects that are made. Creates a nice symmetry I think.

Front Cover

Back cover

Spine

Opened book

Inside pages

Page print - Eucalyptus leaves

Dyeing to Print III - paper technique

About 2 months ago, I put down a couple of jars of solar dyes. One with flax seeds and one with morning glory. I left them for a month in the weak autumn sun. When I took off the lids, phew, did these babies stink!! Putrid rotten leaves, dumped by the neighbours fenceline, and jars quickly stuffed in the dishwasher. The results were quite subtle, but give a good aged feel to the fabric. And once they are rinsed in rain water and dried, thankfully the smell dissipates.

Here are the results. Morning glory produced a pale pink, salmony colour. The flax, a sort of tea shade, more of an English Breakfast than Lady Grey.

This sample is from a fabric book I have been making with the Eco dyed and Eco printed calico and mull. To make the pages for this book I followed the technique documented by Cassandra Tondro
My dyeing equipment doesn't yet include a very large pan, so to get all my pages in the pot I had to cut them first after spraying with alum spray.

Each page is stuffed with autumn leaves, made into a bundle tied up with string.

This is placed in a pot, on a rack above water, and weighted down with an old iron trivet that weighs a ton. This bundle was steamed for 2 hours, then left to cool.

Once cooled, I couldn't wait to unpack it.

Each page has a unique print of leaf, some darker and more distinct than others. In particular, eucalyptus and loquat work really well.

The pages were laid flat - on the kitchen floor - to dry, while I batted the cat, who loves shredding paper, away from my work.

The next day, when fully dry, I ironed them using a dry iron, and folded them into the book pages ready to bind into the cover. I will blog the finished product next time.........

In a frenzy, yet again.....

I have a million ideas spinning around my head, here is where my prioritizing skills will come in handy.  In November I am part of a group exhibition at A Fine Line Gallery in Matakana called Ink, Paper, Thread. Yes November seems a long way away but that does not seem to reassure me out of my sense of panic when I think about how many works I have yet to finish, and how many more left to start even. But start I have, and hopefully by the time we hang I'll have 6 pieces done. Ink, Paper, Thread is to be presented by a group of 11 women who are either book artists, calligraphers or printmakers. Our work will be varied, but basically the common thread (is that trying to be punny?) is the use of paper, ink and threads as the main medium used in construction. It's going to be exciting and unique.

I can tell you it takes a long time to make 109 tiny paper beads, several cups of coffee and an episode of Junior Masterchef later.........These beads were formally from a 1950s edition of a Boys Our Own annual, the story is called 'Masquerade in Baghdad' which sounds quite mysterious dont you think? These will be incorporated into an installation somehow, don't know quite how but the call was heard and I followed it, destination unknown. Watch this space.

You old bag

Here's an idea given to me by Gill Carlsson, constructing a book out of old paper bags. On the day I made this I could only find 4 paper bags, so I filled the pages with greeting cards, tissue paper all the way from Las Vegas, transparencies and a multitude of other found papers. There's even a leaf skeleton in there to discover amongst the pages. A bit of a challenge to line the papers up for stitching, one night at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, but it came together and took on a life of it's own. I called it 'Old Bag', mean't to be a term of endearment.

Old Bag: paper bags, assorted found papers, dried leaf, transparency. Coptic bound. Unique.