🌹 Botanical Printing: Brilliant Mordants for Protein and Celluose
This is a written online course (with many illustrative photos and video) that will be available for unlimited access.
This workshop illustrates one of my favorite processes for dyeing & printing fabric with plants: I call it “Brilliant Mordants and Printing in Color with Flowers”. This course is intended to guide the artist in creating bright and vibrant botanical paintings, created from plants, on natural fibers, without having to use a carrier blanket. Using plant & insect-based dyes, fresh leaves, fresh and dried flowers, plant extracts and food waste, one can achieve beautiful results with a few mordant recipes and techniques.
This workshop includes beautiful photographs of the processes, process videos for visual learners and instructive text around the following :
How to prepare fabric for dyeing (how to mordant)
How to bundle dye with flowers
How to eco-print with fresh flora
Supplies needed to create botanical prints
A “Brilliant Mordant” recipe
A “Post-Mordant” technique & recipe
A fabulous “Quick Indigo” recipe (no vat necessary) for a post-printing process for glorious gem toned greens
Instructions on how to select and successfully print with leaves and flowers, fresh and dried
Fabric recommendations
Many photos and visuals outlining the processes.
These techniques can be applied to both protein and cellulose fibers, and we’ll take a special focus on silk and wool. A myriad of variations can be achieved when applying these techniques to your dyeing practice and countless variations are available from switching up dyes, flowers, leaves and fabrics.
This course does not cover botanical contact-printing with carrier blankets— that course is coming soon, stay tuned!
After purchasing this course, you will be sent an email with a link and password to access the course. Flora Obscura courses live online, on our website, so a special link will be sent to you upon purchase, not a download. A question field is located at the bottom of the course and user questions will be posted with answers are they come in.
There are no returns for online courses, if you experience any issues please reach out!
WHAT IS BOTANICAL PRINTING?
See how this process works on silk velvet, madder root and fresh flowers.
TESTIMONIALS:
“Alison, you were a patient and knowledgeable teacher, and a marvelous fashion designer. I appreciated the focus on hands-on projects. I suspect that is the best learning style for most of us, and the sensory pleasure of working with the dyes, botanicals and fabrics made it an especially rewarding experience. It was an experience I will never forget, and hope to build on what I have learned in my own creative life. I am attaching a picture of myself wearing the silk velvet scarf I made to a dinner with friends. It is a pleasure to wear, especially since I can brag that I made it myself! Everyone is always duly amazed.”
“The more I read, the more I love love love the class. It’s exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve and needed to know. Thanks for being a great teacher and for sharing your art and craft with me.”
