Exploration....

The other day I went out for lunch with the women who help

with the kids garden club and one of them showed us this beautiful

nuno felted scarf eco printed with eucalyptus leaves she made in a workshop.

This is a sample off of the net since I didn't have my camera with me.

Thanks to www.terriekwong.blogspot.ca

Have you ever heard of eco printing?

Basically it's transferring the imprint of leaves and flowers and their

natural dyes onto fabric or paper.

I've experimented with this on paper and hammering leaves between fabric

but had a whole other world opened up to me when I saw the results

from the scarf Lynda made.

So off to the wool shop with Norene (my partner in art crimes)

and while we were talking to Ryan, the owner of Knotty by Nature,

he showed us a scarf very similar to Lynda's...

We then started talking about India Flint.

Eco dyer extraordinaire.

Just so happens that Ryan had one of her books for sale...

Before I knew it the book was purchased and in my bag along with my latest stash of wool!

Today we will experiment with making the scarf and step 2 will be the eco printing

onto said scarves.

Of course I had to try a wee bit of the printing before today so last night I made

up some bundles and steamed them for a few hours...

 Kinda voodoo looking aren't they?

 I left them wrapped until early this morning and like a kid at Christmas

jumped out of bed to see what they had turned into...

 This is the native trailing blackberry which made a really good impression...

 These were some leftover leaves from the flower shop but I don't know the name.

They turned out really nice too...

 Some fall coloured cherry leaves...

 The eucalyptus I used must be a different variety because it didn't

quite turn out how I expected it to...

 Close up of the blackberry leaves...

 ...and the mystery leaves...

 I did these all on some scraps of linen...

So now we have opened up a whole new can of worms to play with!

India's book is full of fascinating explorations into eco dyes and printing

and has already inspired us to take on this new challenge.

There's something so invigorating about discovering yet

another way to create.

One thing leads to another...will post about our further adventures into

the land of wool.

To be continued.