Pounding then steaming

I started by pounding some flowers and leaves on scarves, but when the results were less than spectacular, I wrapped them up with assorted other flowers on some pieces of branches that had fallen from my tree.

After steaming for an hour or so, this is what I found as I unwrapped them.

If you look closely at the bottom one, you can still see the actual flowers stuck to the fabric.  They took a while to remove.  Next time, I'm using a toothbrush to get them off.

Pressed to set the colors, then washed to rinse off the remaining plant matter (I keep finding little bits of wilted flowers around the house), and pressed again, these are the soft results.

How to Make Rust

Start with steel wool.  This kind will turn to pure dust when rusted.  I'm going to try with Grade 3 next time, and see if I can get something interesting out of the heavy curl of the steel wool.

I put the steel wool in a gallon size freezer bag in a single layer.

Add some common household vinegar.  

Then I pressed all the air out of the bag and sealed it.  Put it in the sun to begin the process of weakening the fibers.

After an hour, it looks like this:

A little while later, this is what  the vinegar looks like.  I wonder what it would have done to fabric if I'd used this bloody red runoff...

Next, the magic really begins.  Add hydrogen peroxide.  

The reaction is exothermic, so prepare for it to get hot and to foam up.  I had to "burp" the bag several times before I could let it rest.  

After another few hours in the sun, I began to pour off the excess fluid.  This turned out to be pure gold as well.  As a mordant, it will turn yellow to green, green to dark green, and pale blue to intense green-blue. 

After a while I pulled the steel wool out of the bag and left it to dry in the sun.  

After separating the precipitate the fluid in the jar ends up light and honey-colored.  A little goes a long way as an iron mordant.  One quarter cup in a gallon of water is sufficient either as a pre- or post-mordant.

And here is the resultant bag of rust powder.  I haven't decided how to use it yet, but I promise I'll share when I do.  

Rusty Rebar Redux

I mentioned in a previous post that a found piece of rusted rebar made a beautiful scarf.  I tried it again, and this time documented the process a little more carefully.  I wasn't sure there would be enough rust left on the rebar to reproduce the results of the first scarf, but it's all about the creative process, right?

Here is the scarf after sitting in the sun for 5 days.  Doesn't look too pretty.

Unwrapping it reveals a really nasty looking mess.  I do recommend wearing gloves when working with rust.  Anything that effectively stains fabric will stain your hands.  

As you can see here, some parts of the scarf look almost black.  Others look barely light tan.  It's hard to get how this works.  

The scarf is rather stiff when uncoiling it.  The process removed a lot of the thick layer of rust from the rebar and transferred it to the silk.

Pulling the scarf open continues to be somewhat unremarkable.  Pretty monochromatic and not very exciting.

The next steps are to stop the rusting process by soaking in saltwater and washing, washing, washing. 

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the scarf made the first time around and the scarf made with the leftover rust on the rebar.  The one on the right is paler, subtler, but just as beautiful.

Buried rebar makes magic

I was gardening in my back yard and unearthed a foot-long length of rebar, rusted so heavily, where the shovel hit it, a piece of rust 1/16 of an inch thick chipped off.  I hung on to it for a few weeks trying to decide what to do.  I didn't know if I wanted to chip the rest of the rust off of it and use the bits or do something different.

In the end I decided to take a silk scarf, dunk it in vinegar, then wrap it around the rusty rebar.  As I wrapped it, the scarf twisted on itself.  I wrapped it loosely in Saran wrap to keep it from drying out, and left it in the sun.  

At the end of a week, I removed the plastic wrap, uncoiled the scarf, washed it and pressed it.  And I was delighted at the results!  I had no idea rust could do such beautiful things to a plan white silk scarf.  

Toasted scarves

This weekend I had one of those things which you can either consider a fiasco or a "happy accident" to quote Bob Ross.  I put the bundled scarves on the steamer and didn't notice that the water had boiled dry.  I got a little "toasting" on the scarves.

I started with tightly bundled scarves in which I'd sandwiched delphinium (on the right) and bee balm (on the left)

A few hours later you notice the brown bands going across... Dammit!  It also affected the color of the flowers.  I will have to wait until next year (and a new crop of delphinium petals) to see if the true outcome would have been purple or blue.  In the mean time, I will stick to my script:  "I meant it to look that way!" 

Just sayin'... this was not my first oops, and it turned out not to be my last.  

Introduction

We all need to explore our creative side.  The creative process has been a part of who we are as humans since we lived in caves.

My initial venture into the creative process was my garden.  Gardening flowers, then later vegetables, became my therapy.  My sanity.  Back then I also sewed, and created web pages, and wrote.  Although I didn't really associate any of these with creativity, looking back, I understand that this is what it was.

It wasn't until my life settled down enough that I was able to begin dabbling in things that one might consider "artistic" that I realized how important creativity was to my life.  My passion at the moment is dyeing textiles with natural elements: plant matter and rusty things in particular.  I like that I can take elements from my garden (most recently the petals from my blue delphinium and my purple bee balm), wrap them up in silk, and a few hours later unwrap them, and be delighted--or at times disappointed-- by the results.  It's a creative process and a learning process, and the brain is fueled by both.

I hope you enjoy some of the things I'm working on.