I got the book Eco Colour by India Flint recently. So today when I was cleaning out the planting beds for winter, I gathered a bunch of leaves to try a little printing with leaves and steam. This is lupine leaves on a merino felted scarf.

 Here is the bundle all rolled up on a stick. Then you wrap the bundle tightly with string.

 Here is the second scarf. This is one I got from Dharma Trading that is a silk and wool blend. I covered the scarf with sunflower petals and leaves. I did not use any type of mordant with these just to see how they would work without anything extra. I did wet the scarves down first.

 Here it is all rolled up and wrapped with string. I didn’t think very clearly with the string because it has been used before for shibori dyeing and it had blue dye in the string. We’ll see the effect of that later, I’m sure.

 Here are the bundles steaming on the stove top. I think I will definitely have to cut the sticks a little shorter if I am going to be doing much of this type of dyeing. We’ll see how it comes out.

Here are the bundles after steaming for two hours. The one on the left is the lupine leaves and felted scarf. There is transfer of the blue dye for sure. The one on the right looks more promising and is the sunflower one. Now the really hard part. I have to wait to open these for a couple of weeks. I put them outside so hopefully I will forget about them and not try and peak too early in the process. I will post the results when I just can’t stand waiting any longer.