On 23rd March 2024 Maggie Pearson gave an interesting talk to Beartown members on botanical contact printing [also known as eco printing], using local leaves with natural dyes to design and create unique and sustainable hand printed designs on natural fibres.
After the inspiring talk by Maggie, 6 members, Wendy, Helen, Nancy, Anne, Chris and Christine, decided a workshop to develop the discussions that arose that evening was needed.
A date was agreed by all, and a very exciting workshop was agreed upon. Not only botanical fabric printing, but also botanical paper printing.
Maggie facilitated the workshop, and gave them clear instructions surrounding the processes they would be following. A clear chemical formula is followed, but Nancy said it really felt like magic!
Here’s Nancy’s description –
When you first start to unroll your fabric that’s been tightly bound around the copper pipe after steaming, you see the magic of the colours from the leaves unfurled in all their splendour.
We embraced the unexpected and hung both top and bottom pieces on the line to dry. Both sides different but similar due to the alum and iron chemical interplay.
It was such fun choosing and placing a huge variety of leaves of different sizes, shapes and colours. Some worked beautifully and others gave unexpected, surprising results.
All of us had very individual pieces to take away with us. Just the first step on a journey- who knows what each of us will develop the fabric and paper into, I find creativity develops from playing and manipulating the materials, letting the objects fold into possibilities we can use.
New skills learned, and new opportunities to be creative await. I highly recommend this new way of fabricating processes.
Some of the group brought their efforts to show us at our first autumn meeting. Everyone was most impressed!
Visit Maggie’s website http://www.bymaggienaturally.co.uk to find out more.
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