Playing with Rakefet

This is not a real garment yet. It is only connected with pins and it made from one piece of fabric without any cuts.

Natural Dyeing and Botanical Prints

A few weeks ago Vilte and me was visited in Amsterdam. We took a private Class with Leentje Van Hengel. Our goal was to deep our knowledge about mordants and classical natural dyes like Madder, Weld and Indigo. We learned a lot during this 3 days class.

When I came back home I started to dye samples and to practice what I have learned

but simultaneously I'm trying to combine what I learned with my work.

From the beginning I knew it could be a problem. a conflict between the two techniques.

Botanical Prints needs metals like iron or copper to be able to get bold print or images with depth but those metals will dull the bright shades of madder or other dye plants. Madder with iron will easily become brown.

On the other hand, to achieve deep red from madder for example needs mordant such as Alum and that will make many of the print plant materials such as eucalyptus or rose leaves yellow.

There must be a solution and I began a research now. So far, I had some successes but also some failures. Will see how and where it will takes me.