Birds in Tree with Madder Lac

Madder lac natural dye extract screen printed, using deconstructed screen printing techniques with my Birds in Tree Inverse Stencil, onto cochineal dyed cotton fabric.

Birds in Tree Inverse Stencil taped to the front of a traditional silk screen for deconstructed screen printing!  Stay tuned for more on this technique!!!

Learn more about these techniques in my eBook and Video series 

Mark Making with Nature!!! 

January 2014

There WILL be some of this happening in my wet studio next week!  Natural dye extracts painted onto silk fabrics.

Dyeing Paper - One Approach

Size your paper with soy milk, let it dry/cure 12-24hours.  Then apply some pomegranate extract, or any natural dye extract, natural earth pigment, etc., to the surface of your paper.  Allow to dry.  Btw you CAN do this for paper pulp as well but this becomes a little trickier and is a bit on the advanced papermaking side of the spectrum.

You need to allow your paper to cure for 3-6 months, depending on the heat and humidity levels of your locale, BEFORE you rinse the excess dye off the surface of the paper.  Not exactly a quick project I know BUT the colors can be quite stunning.  I highly suggest working with papers of mixed fiber content, not just cotton rag.  Experiment with flax, hemp, silk, recycled sari, papers for your natural dye projects.

Dyeing with Pomegranates

You can dye fabric, fibers, and even leather with Pomegranates.  Pomegranate dye can be obtained by cooking down either fresh and/or dried Pomegranate skins, eat the pulp inside your fresh pomegranates. You can also dye with Pomegranate extract available from select retailers.

Madder Root Dyed Vintage Crochet Lace

Madder Root Dyed Vintage Lace and Trims

Vintage lace and trims I picked up at a yard sale this summer, some are antiques. Everything has been scoured by washing twice in hot water - to get rid of the smell, then boiled with soda ash for two hours. The items were then mordanted with alum and soaked for two days in the alum vat, I then dyed everything with Madder Root Extract I left them to soak in the madder root vat for two days. The brighter yellow items are made of nylon hence the color.

Today's Dye Session

Today's dye session consisted of a madder root extract vat and a logwood purple extract vat. The madder root vat contains a combination of cotton and linen vintage trims. The logwood vat contains vintage damask napkins and linen napkins.

Screen Printing with Natural Dyes

Cochienal Extraction 1