Category Archives: Leaf prints

February 18, 2014 · 10:08 am

Leaf print of the week

IMG_0020_1

These are Eucalyptus Cinerea leaves on silk velvet. The velvet came from Beautiful Silks.  Just four small squares in a couple of scrap packs I bought along with whatever I was ordering at the time.  From my point of view this was lucky dip by post, and more fun than most lucky dips I remember as a child.  I would never have expected to enjoy velvet so much!  Here are both squares fresh from unbundling.

IMAG3229

Perhaps I’ll have to make a cushion cover… as proposed in the comments.  Finally, a little close-up.  E Cinerea famously has heart-shaped leaves, but this tree had been pruned (mostly by me) and the new growth has come out in quite different shapes, which suits me just fine.  For some reason, I love the leaves that have provided food to caterpillars at least as much as the intact leaves, if not more.

IMAG3264 (1)

Meanwhile, I still have at least 80g of indigo dyed sock yarn (enough for a pair of socks), so after all the cheering on from readers recently, I have tried the least difficult solution to crocking I found (start with simple!) and soaked it overnight in a vinegar solution.  No bleeding into the rinse water… and I’ve left the yarn out to dry.  Fingers crossed!

10 Comments

Filed under Eucalypts, Leaf prints

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 5, 2014 · 8:57 pm

Leaf Print of the Day

IMAG3315

This glorious tree is in full bud near my parents’ house.

IMAG3208

I have had colour from the buds before, but they are still very small at present. You can see how spectacular it will be to have flowers in such profusion when the time comes!

IMAG3210

An entire branch had fallen to the ground: too good an opportunity to pass up.  I was on my bike that day, so I filled my pannier before heading home.

IMAG3255

And so, buds and leaves of an unknown eucalypt on silk velvet, part of a special pack of some kind from Beautiful Silks. I have no idea what I could do with these small pieces of velvet, but I’m more than open to suggestions.  Treasure bag? Cushion panel?

3 Comments

Filed under Eucalypts, Leaf prints

Tagged as , , ,

January 24, 2014 · 8:28 pm

Leaf prints of the week: Pecan and Eucalyptus on cotton

Last week there was some leaf printing. Eucalyptus Scoparia leaves, one of my favourites.

IMAG3492

Pecan leaves, inspired by Lotta Helleberg (when I went to her blog to insert this link there was an especially delectable pecan leaf printed fabric on show, by complete coincidence) and by a wonderful lunch with friends who have a pecan tree. The leaves have been patiently waiting in my freezer.

IMAG3490

Let me admit right here and now that I had some alum and tannin mordanted fabric which took no colour at all–I must have made some kind of mistake there!

IMAG3489

As always, the thrill of seeing good things begin to emerge.

IMAG3496

Then waiting to unwrap bundles.  I saved these until I had a friend over for dinner who I realised would enjoy the reveal as much as I do.

IMAG3499

Some pecan prints were better than others, but the good ones are lovely.

IMAG3535

And the Eucalyptus leaf prints were all I hoped for and more.

IMAG3534

6 Comments

Filed under Eucalypts, Fibre preparation, Leaf prints

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 23, 2014 · 11:30 am

A Community Celebration

As I read The Little Book of Craftivism, ideas kept popping into my head.  This one took a little longer to execute than the mini banners. There is a row of immense, sugar gums (Eucalyptus Cladocalyx) over 100 year old in our neighbourhood which were scheduled to be cut down due to changes in the railway corridor.  Many people in our neighbourhood were part of a campaign to save them.

IMAG3510

We managed to save these trees (albeit very severely pruned) while dozens of others were cut down.  People have been saying to me when they visit the nearby local neighbourhood centre how awful it looks now that all the trees that used to stand between the neighbourhood centre and the railway have been cut down.  They often say how relieved they are that the ones we saved are still there–but they do not realise what went into saving them.  They don’t even know those trees were threatened.  There are still all night works and daytime works and continuing campaigns and about noise going on and many people in the area feel very discouraged living with the aftermath of all the infrastructure works.  So I imagined bunting that read ‘these trees saved by community action’ and a bit of a celebration of our having actually succeeded in this part of what we have tried to do.

IMAG3512_1

Well, I made the bunting.  And another member of our local group emailed out the most beautiful invitation to come and hang it up and celebrate the continued existence of the sugar gums.  And so a small local celebration, complete with our local MP Steph Key and our local councillor, Jennie Boisvert, who both put considerable effort into supporting our campaign.  I wanted to thank the woman who stared the campaign and was its mainstay, so I made her a little leafy bag.  Here it is filled with rolled up bunting ready to go and celebrate.

IMAG3501

And here we are, after a highly entertaining hanging of the bunting.

IMAG1509

I’ve made a tutorial on how to create this kind of lettered bunting, which you can find in the how-to page (link at the top of the blog) or here, if you’d like to try your own.  I already have another plan, personally….

2 Comments

Filed under Craftivism, Leaf prints, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 17, 2014 · 9:52 am

For the love of mending

My favourite bag has already been mended rather extensively, as some may remember. But it was not to be expected that would be the last time. Not only that, but it had an encounter with a Moreton Bay Fig tree which dripped sap–or perhaps some other sticky substance–on it (the black splodge you can see below).  It was very hard to get that sap out of my hair, too, and let us not speak of my shorts… But sap was only a side detail in a glorious solstice celebration my friends organised, complete with one in a series of phenomenal home made papier mache pinatas.

IMAG3212

I had a few cuffs and collars from recent dye pots. They are much redder and blacker than the pieces which made the bag up until now.

IMAG3213

Cuffs and collars often come out best of all.  Proximity to iron? Three layers give better mordant absorption and/or better capacity to get a good contact print?  All that random interfacing? Tick–all of the above? I’m not sure, but it has always been this way for me.  Anyway… it began with a hand sewn patch at the solstice event, just so the bag could travel to Melbourne next day without suffering major trauma.  Then I ripped out the lining and went for it in all the necessary places.

IMAG3308

While I was on the job and pondering the unexpected benefits of interfacing, I raided my stash of intefacing of yesteryear–who knows where I inherited this pre-iron-on interfacing from? I have beena  receiving point for other people’s haberdashery for years now!  I interfaced the opening, which has worked out well in spite of my general suspicion of interfacing and the synthetics out of which most of it is made. And here is the resulting bag on a beachside bench.

IMAG3307

I know I’ve heard the philosophical debate over whether a boat whose every plank has been replaced is still the same boat. If I’d been the philosopher in question I would have had to ask about a patched pair of jeans–the place my love of mending really took root and my skills with a sewing machine seriously began to develop–or perhaps, a bag of patches.

2 Comments

Filed under Leaf prints, Sewing

Tagged as , , ,

January 14, 2014 · 9:50 am

More tree loving craftivism

My second ‘banner’ has gone up another neighbourhood tree.  This one is my favourite E Scoparia. It was the first really promising dye eucalypt I discovered.  It used to be home to a pair of piping shrikes, who nested there in their little mud cup for many seasons.  In the last year it has acquired a nesting box and we’ve seen rosellas coming in and out of it.

IMAG3385

This is the tree my friends and I have been mulching and weeding and we have planted in an understory of native ground covers, mostly forms of saltbush, which are now doing really well.  If you have been reading a while you will have seen this tree protected from passing Royal Show foot traffic in earlier posts here and here.  Those images show how much the groundcover project has progressed in the last 18 months or so.  In the beginning, people would remove plant guards, pull out small plants soon after we put them in or just trample young plants by accident.  Not any more.  I think the evidence of care and the success of the surviving understorey plants generates more thoughtful treatment from passersby, and it’s clear that lots of local people now understand that their neighbours are making efforts that are transforming an almost bare patch of hard earth scattered with weeds and rubbish, into something lovely.  I collected the rubbish that had landed under it this morning and maybe that is ebbing a little too.

IMAG3388

So, four of us stood and admired this tree, delectable breakfast smoothies in hand, and tied on this little banner of admiration and appreciation.

IMAG3387

And here’s the full length picture…

IMAG3391

Leave a comment

Filed under Craftivism, Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Leaf prints, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 12, 2014 · 4:59 pm

Tree loving craftivism

While I was in Melbourne, I found Sarah Corbett’s A Little Book of Craftivism.  Yes, it is literally small, but inspiring out of proportion to its size.  It is about the work of the craftivist collective, together with proposals about how the reader might engage in their own craftivism.

IMAG3245

For those who might be wondering… one definition of craftivism: ‘Craftivism is a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper & your quest for justice more infinite.’ More at the link.

I loved this little book from the beginning. This is activism of a gentle, slow kind.  It isn’t the only kind of activism the world needs.  But every social movement needs a variety of approaches–I’ve participated in many–and gentle is one of them.  This book is packed with organising wisdom, clear instruction, pictures that inspire and make you wish you had been there and examples of projects from the small to the enormous that offer plenty of scope for DIY.

IMAG3361

For a view of the book and its content, click here.  For a brief review with links to multiple other reviews and ways to purchase online other than through amazon, click here.  To purchase from the craftvist collective itself, click here and check the sidebar.

Did I mention finding this book inspiring?  I think it’s one of the highest compliments that you could pay to a book of its kind to say that I immediately wanted to go out and make some of the projects in this book and could immediately see places that could happen to good effect. Not only that, I tried my ideas out on my nearest and dearest and then created them.  My ‘mini protest banner’ is a little different to the cross stitched versions in the book–but nevertheless the same concept.

IMAG3241

I took:

  • a calico sack from a local business for my banner background (I offered to take the offcast bags from a shop and they accepted)
  • some not-so-glorious leaf print experiments for backing
  • some leaf-printed collars and cuffs for my frame
  • some eucalyptus dyed silk thead and
  • some secondhand bias binding… and…

Before long I had made two banners.  We hung the first one today. One of my friends offered the view that every day was a good day for this kind of event (I guess we’re friends in part because we agree on things like that!) so we had cool drinks of water and cherries and chat and then went out to admire the tree and tie on.  The 6 year old present wants to make more banners, which is additionally promising.

IMAG3366_1

This banner celebrates a river red gum (E Camaldulensis) that we managed to save from being cut down last year, with help from other local people and our local MP, Steph Key.  It has a legally mandated 3 m exclusion zone around it to protect the root zone, but this is not being observed very well lately and I want the people responsible to know that we care.  I had to measure the tree to be sure I had stitched on enough tape:  3.6 m (11′ 9”) around the trunk, well above the ground.  To give you a sense of its size… and the relative size of the banner (which is in the picture), I give you the full view.

IMAG3373

4 Comments

Filed under Book Review, Craftivism, Eucalypts, Leaf prints, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 8, 2014 · 9:27 am

Leaf printed t shirts

Last year, three t shirts from the op shop (thrift store) found their way into my soymilk bucket.  They have been sitting in a little pile since then, but recently they made their way into the dye pot. This one is for a treasured friend who has been waiting a while since I checked size with him.  The first picture (of the front) gets the colour about right and the second one (further below) is inexplicably different though taken within minutes!

IMAG3257

The leaves are from another friend’s Eucalyptus Cinerea.  It needs trimming to keep it out of the hair and eyes of passersby and I have generously offered to help!

IMAG3259_1

Yet another friend (perhaps I should ask my dear friends if they are happy to be named online!) visited on dyeing day so I gave her this next one and she designed its new leafy incarnation.  On the day I am writing I brought it in to work still bundled and tied with string, and she opened it on her office desk over lunch.  We experimented with putting these garments in a dyebath, rather than just into a simmering pot of water, and that is the reason for the overall orange that is strongest up near the neckline on the back where the fabric absorbed the dyebath most strongly.

IMAG3284_1

I think her design is lovely…

IMAG3281_1

The third t-shirt was a pale grey one.  I bundled it up in the morning and gifted it, cooked, but still rolled and tied, to a friend who is completely enchanted by the eco-print process and who has been facing tough times lately.  I’m hoping unwrapping that bundle gladdened her heart in these challenging times. It sure gladdened my heart to have her visiting us.

While we’re talking t-shirts… I couldn’t help noticing that two of the three were made in Bangladesh, a mighty long way from Adelaide.  For anyone interested in viewing the global garment trade from the perspective of a single t-shirt (though not one of these leafy t-shirts!) Planet Money from US National Public Radio has made a series on the subject you might like to check out.

Hopefully that’s three op shop t-shirts that will now have much more exciting second lives, with much less travel involved!

11 Comments

Filed under Eucalypts, Leaf prints

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 12, 2013 · 9:00 am

Eucalyptus Nicholii?

Remember this bundle of leaves and my excitement about finally meeting E Nicholii, fully grown? The straight, narrow leaves below were supposed to be E Nicholii.

IMAG2935

Well.  E Nicholii is a well- and long-recognised dye eucalypt, described by Jean Carman and the Victorian Handspinners and Weavers Guild in their classic books, and prized by dyers I have spoken to who were using it in the 1970s and 1980s to obtain reds and oranges.  So I was rather surprised to find this result from the best of several attempts:

IMAG2980

I did get a roughly orange smudge on some of my fabrics from the ‘E Nicholii’. In the same pot, cooked for the same length of time and on fabric mordanted in the same batch, E Cinerea produced vibrant colour:

IMAG3020

In the past, using trees I was entirely confident were E Nicholii (albeit small specimens) I have got something more like this:

IMAG3015

These are blocks from a quilt I have been working on…

IMAG3016

My own E Nicholii is a tiny specimen, surrounded by a personalised fence to prevent certain marauders with a tendency to dig up anything promising with no thought for the future.

IMAG3006

The marauders came past to check what was happening as I took a photo of the tree.

IMAG3005

How to explain this eco-printing result?  I didn’t identify these trees myself but relied on someone else who was clearly knowledgeable, which is not to say any of us are above error.  If I had identified them myself, I would say without hesitation that the dye pot is more reliable than my identification skills.  But there are so many variables: these trees were mature while I have tried only young trees–all I have been able to find and identify with confidence.  They were in relative shade and growing in a relatively cool spot…    I just don’t know!

10 Comments

Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Leaf prints

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

December 9, 2013 · 10:31 am

Of leaves and linking opportunities

IMAG2978

It was a weekend of leaf printing… and more about that later, since there were some expected outcomes as well as some surprises!  But meanwhile… India Flint, whose techniques I am trying to use to create these prints (though as they say in the classics, all failures are my own work), has a brilliant blog.  It is just as interesting and informative as on previous occasions when I’ve linked to it, but currently India is inviting people to post what they would like her to write about.  So, should you wish to take up this opportunity, click here and contribute to the conversation!

4 Comments

Filed under Eucalypts, Leaf prints

Tagged as , , ,