dye blanket

I’ve recently been naturally dyeing some solid colours, rather than eco-printing. I’ve been aided in my experiments by Rebecca Desnos’ beautiful ebook. She inspired me to try dyeing soy-mordanted cotton with avocado seeds (avocado stones/pits). When I first put the fabric in the dye bath I didn’t quite believe it would do anything. The dye looked quite pale. But I left the fabric in the pot for a day and a half and it slowly turned this vivid pink!

I tried eco-printing over this fabric but didn’t have much success. But I was able to use it as a dye blanket to create a beautiful resist effect on some watercolour paper. I covered some iron-mordanted watercolour paper with gum leaves, then laid a piece of my avocado-dyed cotton on top, pressed it between 2 tiles and boiled for an hour. Some of the avocado dye transferred to the paper and the pink turned to purple in reaction with the iron.

 

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