Eco Print T-shirt - Part II

Continuing on with the eco print t-shirt story . . .

The bundle rested for four days after being simmered, until I couldn't stand the suspense any longer and I opened the bundle.

The following photos show the bundle as I was unwrapping it ... first with both imprints and leaves showing and then with the leaves and plastic removed.

I am really pleased with how this has turned out and I will post a photo of the full shirt once it has dried.

Eco Print T-shirt - Part I

I have been interested in trying to eco print on a finished garment . . . I see this as a challenge because of the finished seams and construction details (sleeves!) but also as a way of achieving a design on a specific part of the garment.

I purchased a plain inexpensive cotton t-shirt for this first attempt and I scoured it to remove impurities from the manufacturing process and then pre-mordanted it with alum and soda ash.

I chose leaves from which I could be sure of getting some imprint (raspberry, rose, Japanese maple and smoke bush) but I also added some unknown grasses along the lower edge.

In between the front and back of the shirt I inserted fabric that had been soaked in an iron-rich solution.

The shirt was rolled between layers of plastic onto a thick wooden branch and the outer edge was covered with plastic before being wrapped tightly. I then simmered the bundle in water with iron and onion skins for two hours.

Eco print purses are ready!

Wow, it is a whole month since I posted here and I have been busy creating purses and scarves from my eco printed fabric.

This weekend I bundled up some more fabric with fall leaves and they are now curing for the next four or five days ... it is SO hard to wait that long to unroll the bundles and see what prints have appeared.  This time I used one pot to which I added just a little cutch and some pomegranate tea (the fabric looks warm brown on the outside of the bundles) and a second pot to which I added some logwood and osage along with rusty iron spikes (they look bluer on the outside of the bundles). 

Here are the bundles after they were taken from the pots and they are draining and curing in this mesh basket. The two darker bundles are scarves that I have over-printed to get some more distinct prints in the middle of them ... they were quite dark already so I am interested to see how they turn out this time ... maybe I shouldn't have added more iron, but I'm being adventuresome!

I have been working on a new design for purses using this eco printed fabric. They are a little larger than my usual little fold-over purses and they also have a sturdy zipper along the top.  I listed the first one in my Etsy shop today and will list more during the coming week.

I am also working on some of my "usual" design purses (one of them was listed in my shop today) as I know that some people just love that design.

Please drop by my Etsy shop to see more photos kathykinsella.etsy.com

What do you think of them????

What I have been up to . . .

Yikes, it is three months since I made a blog post so today I will try to remedy that.  I have been contemplating some new additions to my fibre art and have been doing a bit of reading an dreaming this past year of what it might be like to create some of my own fabric using local leaves and plants. I am not great on diving in without research, though, so when Melissa Nasby of Soulfibre Studio in Salmon Arm offered an eco printing workshop I decided to hop on board and let her organize my first day of eco printing! 

It was SO much fun that I had to come home and immediately dive into it myself . . . I am still searching for nice big pots, including a cast iron pot, but for the moment my old stainless steel pot is doing the job.  Today I am over-printing some cotton fabric that had a couple of areas with good colour but indistinct prints.  The hardest part is waiting the 3-5 days before unwrapping the bundles!

I wrapped the fabric around a branch of horse chestnut tree with lichen on it to see what, if any, effect that might have on the process.

I posted a couple of other pictures on my Facebook page, if you would like to see them (facebook.com/kk.fibre.art)

I'll try to not be so long posting the next time!