Thursday, February 21, 2013

Getting Mixed Up

The hollyhocks have been flowering for months now and we are getting quite a collection of flowers.  I have still only been picking them up from the ground, not pulling fresh flowers off.  It is almost the end of the flowers but I can't wait till the two or three plants we have stop flowering totally, I have no more room in the bag. Or the freezer.
I have this tendency to try things and not keep great notes, so I have tried to use a similar process to last time - using my blog (which I keep saying is my visual diary).
But ...  I found some dried up flowers on the ground and some really fresh and soft petals.  I had left some silk soaking in alum and forgotten all about it, so I had the fabric ready to go - no preparation needed.
Forgetting instantly that I had intended to use the frozen flowers, I got out a piece of the silk, laid the petals out on it and was going to leave it to see if I got a contact print.  But then I accidentally let some of the dried petals crumble onto the silk and the colour started moving immediately.   Of course, I couldn't let that go.  Now there are crumbled dried flowers all over the fabric, interspersed with the flowers.
I think I got a bit mixed up about what I was doing.  I had started preparing to put the frozen flowers in a muslin bag and soak them. Somehow I have now put the contact dyeing into a solution.  So who knows what will happen.  Hopefully something usable.

It now has petals in contact with the fabric but also soaking in a solution.  I am hoping that I am not left with any white bits, that the solution takes on some of the colour.  There are not that many flowers in it though, so the colour could be quite washed out. I suppose I can just overdye it.

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