Flower Pounding

I continue to be amazed at the multitude of techniques for fabric surface design.  I just made a quick trial of flower pounding, inspired by one of the books I just purchased in Fredericktown: Flower Pounding by Ann Frischkorn and Amy Sandrin (C&T Publishing, 2000).  Flower pounding is just as is sounds, hammering fresh flowers into prepared fabric.  The fabric (cotton muslin) is prepared just as you would for dyeing with plant dyes - alum and soda ash.

A quick tour of my property for blooms yielded violets, lilac, bluets, spring beauty, pink dogwood, redbud and weigela.  Here is a sampler of those flowers:

The lilac was most disappointing.  I love the clusters of the tiny pale purple flowers this time of year, and the air now is heavy with their scent.  The pounding process on the lilacs only resulted in a murky pinkish-brown.  The bluets and spring beauties, tiny delicate wildflowers, dissolved into a pulpy mess.  The redbuds had nice color, the weigela was another murky mess.  The pink dogwood - oh, my!  It actually came out darker than the fresh flower, and the parallel veins imprinted onto the fabric -lovey!  The violets went splotchy, but notice the color of the flowers.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  What would happen with violets in a dye bath?  I have one little piece of prepared silk that didn't make it into the last plant dye session.  It might take a lot of violet flowers to do it, but I am going to try dyeing with them.

One important matter when you are collecting plants or flowers from the wild: be sure you are not picking anything that is rare or endangered, and no matter what, only take what you need.  For every one that you pick, leave at least ten of the same plant undisturbed.

Oh yes, here's more of the lovely pink dogwoods:

Happy spring!