Fiddling with Scraps: The Roots Book

 

Accordion book, 3 3/4" x 4"

Fashioned from an assortment of scraps from the Roots Project and two years of pandemic eco-dyeing, this little Roots book combines sashiko stitching, eco-dyed scraps from foliage within a one-mile radius, and the roots of native grasses. Enjoy - I know I did.

Back of book

Inside

Outside

Close-up

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The creative surprise? How easy it turned out to be to appliqué the dried native grass roots to the cloth using teensy tiny anchoring stitches.

Weave Yourself a Metaphor

 

Weave Yourself a Metaphor

This assemblage combines scraps and elements from a range of different projects: native grass roots and the chiffon ribbon and broken jewelry bits the roots were supposed to miraculously and organically turn into jewelry (but didn't); knitted strips of eco-dyed cloth; and strips of paper dyed with coffee containing notes from the spiritual window shopping I have been doing over the last several months.

Elements

Broken Bird

A gift from a friend who knows my inner nature.

Broken porcelain chick

Roots, Ribbons and Jewelry Bits

Technically, this is part of the ongoing Roots project. Here we see the native grass roots, chiffon ribbon, and broken jewelry bits in situ. The idea was that this stage of the project would give the roots agency and they would assume control of the jewelry-making process. That didn't happen — the roots did not bond and intertwine with the ribbon as envisioned. So...they have been recycled into this assemblage.

Native grass roots trying to fashion jewelry

Eco-Dyed Recycled Cloth

Scraps from an eco-dyeing session, cut into long strips, knotted together, and then knitted.

Cutting cloth into long strips

Knitting cloth strips

Paper Scraps with Notes

The notes contain ideas that captured my attention in recent months, like: "An ideology is one's imaginary relationship to reality." To encourage the notepaper to blend better with the rest of the elements, I dunked the notes in a cup of coffee and then let them dry. No photo - use your imagination.

The Assemblage

When this piece began, I was focusing on the poor little chick's plight and was using the working title, "Broken." As the work evolved, it transformed into "Weave Yourself a Metaphor," which, as far as I can see, is what we are all doing every morning when we wake up.

Pounded Flower Textiles

What better time than a trip to a friend's house in London to experiment with eco-dyeing with pounded flowers? I have tried this technique before, oblivious to lessons learned by those who have gone before, and the results were a miserable failure. That earlier experiment involved white T-shirts, lots of flowers, and vigorous pounding with rocks on a concrete surface. The result? Colorful torn T-shirts with ragged, gaping holes. They would have looked sort of punk except for all of the florals.

This time around I tapped into the expertise of a master. Check out Samorn at easternweft.com, who will brilliantly guide you through the basics. Key tips include wooden mallets and cardboard-covered surfaces. The results below are stage one in ongoing experimentation with use of these eco-textile florals as base materials for future creations.

In between visits to museums, galleries, and button vendors, I leisurely collected likely-looking flowers and leaves on lovely walks through the October rains.

Foraged flowers

The yard of 100% cotton I had brought with me was pre-died with what resulted in very faint, base colors using both regular Twining tea and a blend of Indian teas which included saffron, turmeric, and other spices. Here is the cloth drying above the Aga stove.

Drying cloth above the Aga

And below are the gorgeous results of the flower-pounding process. I left half of my creations with my host, who loaned me her solarium as an art studio during the stay. The other half are about to become something wondrous. 

Stay tuned.

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What flowers and leaves work? A large part of the fun is experimentation, and it would have been nice to have been scientifically methodical and keep track, but I didn't. You can see some gorgeous pansies above, and I vaguely remember begonias and fuchsias working well, but I had no idea what most of the flowers were to begin with.

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Immortality and Family Heirlooms: The Book of Secrets

Cover: ecoprint with cabbage and eucalyptus

I have a long-held belief that you continue to exist as long as someone living still remembers you. My great-grandmother, born right after the Civil War and a huge influence on my life up to the age of sixteen, still lives vividly on in my memory. My best shot for this kind of immortality lies with my two grandnieces, whom I have been doing my utmost to impress in an artsy, maker kind of way for the past eleven years. It occurred to me that I don't have all that much longer to sum it all up, try to pass on what I have learned over the course of a lifetime through trial and error, and hopefully save them from the same mistakes I made. And here you have it — an instant family heirloom.

Inside cover and first page

Materials used are cotton and silk and a lot of eco-dyeing and ecoprinting. 

Second round of dyeing for ecoprint bundles

Once the cloth was dyed, each sheet of fabric was folded to form two pages, front and back. A page of poster board was inserted between the pages, and all paired-page edges are hand-finished. I figure that years from now, even if the people who stumble across the book have absolutely no idea who I am, they will take one look at all of that maniacal stitching and feel there is just too much work in this piece to casually throw it out. Which leads us to the second immortality strategy — heirlooms. Even after all who remember you are themselves dead and gone, the heirloom may live on. So here you have it: The Book of Secrets.

Inside cover: cotton dyed with cabbage and eucalyptus

The book is a joint gift for the two girls and their grandmother (my sister). She is in the habit of reading aloud to them and then engaging the girls in animated discussion. The idea here is that The Book of Secrets works a little like the I Ching: You randomly flip to a page, read it aloud, and then all present discuss what it means and the relation to their current lives. As with the I Ching, as your life changes the meaning you draw from the text also changes, so the book itself has a kind of built-in immortality. These are the lessons I wish someone had taught me when I was a child. Now, at age 71, I am still trying to master these strategies, sometimes succeeding, often falling short, and continuing to learn.

Page one: silk dyed with rose leaves, smoke bush flowers

Page two: silk dyed with maple leaves, rose leaves, smoke bush flower

Page three: silk dyed with rose and eucalyptus leaves

Page four: silk dyed with rose and eucalyptus leaves

Page five: silk dyed with maple and rose leaves

Page six: silk dyed with smoke bush flowers and rose leaves

A pause here to acknowledge that yes, there is a mistake in the printing on this page. Instead of dismay, my reaction was delight; mistakes are perfectly in accord with the secrets in this book. Regarding the printing itself, I used a vintage children's printing set with individual stamps for each letter and a pad of archival ink.

Page 7: silk dyed with tea

Page eight: silk dyed with tea

Page nine: cotton dyed with cabbage and maple leaves

Back cover: cotton dyed with cabbage and maple leaves; patchwork with sashiko stitching

Why not add a little mystery to the heirloom? When the girls were born I decided I wanted them to call me Tante Minna, which offers a tiny bit of extended immortality to two people from the past whom the girls never met. My great-grandmother was part of a group of friends from early childhood in Germany who called themselves "the jolly ten."  We called each of them by the honorific "tante" (aunt). As a child, the name Tante Minna, one of the ten, always struck me as very funny. A hundred years from now no one will have any idea who Tante Minna was, but through this book I, my great-grandmother, and the original Tante Minna live on. Until, of course, climate change makes the entire human species a vague memory.

Ecoprint Experiments

I've been having lots of fun with ecoprint experiments, inspired by consummate eco dyer India Flint and her book on botanical dyes called Eco Colour. Here are some results using bundled repurposed silk and steamed eucalyptus leaves, rose leaves, and carrot tops along with a little tea.

I find silk too hot to wear, so I used some of the eco dyed silk overlayed on a hand stitched linen top I made a few years back. Again, the silk itself is repurposed, salvaged from silk blouses scored at bargain prices from a thrift shop.

Close-up of upper pocket (recycled silk blouse cuff) with rose leaf print

Close-up of lower pocket with eucalyptus leaf print