I got off to a slow start with eco printing. I’ve had all these amazing visions of spectacular eco prints, and to begin with it was a BIG FLOP.  Well not a flop, but I didn’t get the results I expected. Which supposedly is one of the “joys” of eco printing. I’m more inclined to call it frustrating than joyful, but whatever rocks your socks.

I started out trying to do some eco printing on silk with eucalyptus. I steamed my bundled leaves and then after an hour happily unravelled them to find…not much. I got some very pale yellow leaf prints, not the glorious reds and pale greens I was expecting.

So I did some overdyeing. My favorite has been overdyed with logwood (above) and has an iron mordant (improving the lightfastness of the logwood as an added bonus). It’s very earthy and rustic.

Then I overdyed some others with purple carrot (above) and also red cabbage (not shown). Interesting results! I created twist resists on these to preserve the original colour so there would be some patterning. I quite like these too, they are pale but also quite pretty.

I also solar dyed 2 scarves (below, shown together), one with a mix of berries and a bit of callistemon, and the other just with calistemon. The darker one is the berries. I actually prefer the paler on in this instance, the callistemon gave a nice earthy dusky pink.

Yesterday I decided to try my hand at eco printing again, being a long weekend I had a little more “me” time. (Thanks husband!!)

Well, yesterday’s efforts paid off, I got some stunning results!

These will all be up for sale at the Rose St Market this coming Sunday!! I’ve also just bundled up some of the Merino so fingers crossed it does as i intend. If so, it will also be available on Sunday.  If you see anything you like and wish to purchase, drop me an email! [email protected]

PS, I’ll take some snazzier photos when the weather improves. It’s been yucky and grey all day! Just when I need some sunshine for my camera, poo poo.