Coffee and onion skins

I love indigo (in case you hadn’t noticed!) ;-). But recently I’ve been reading a lot about other natural dyes, including eco printing. So I thought I’d have a go.

My first attempt at eco printing was not a roaring success, based as it was on pulling together various techniques I’d gleaned from scouring the internet. (Since then, a more detailed tutorial has been published by Terriea Kwong at The Felting and Fibre Studio.)

I soaked a silk scarf in vinegar, put some rose and geranium leaves on top, rolled it up and tied it, steamed it for an hour, then left it in a glass jar in the sun for three days. The result was some very faint leaf prints, though a few were a bit stronger.

Then I came across Dyes from Kitchen Produce by Setsuko Ishii in a discount bookshop, illustrated with line drawings in that beautifully simple Japanese style.

So I went back to trying shibori techniques with a couple of different dyes.


First coffee:

Then onion skins:

I think there are some promising colours here. ESP fears I will be raiding the freezer for his stores of soft fruit next!