Making the Ecoprint Bundle

A nice tight eco bundle ready for steaming

Next to fabric preparation the most important thing is to create a really tight bundle for steaming. To prevent bleeding through the layers on the roll a barrier is required. The most common barrier is to use plastic sheeting. If you use part of a painter’s dropsheet you will be able to use the same piece of plastic many times over. This is more environmentally friendly than using cling wrap which will be a single use plastic.

Lay the plastic out on your work bench and place the mordanted cotton on top of it. The fabric needs to be damp - not wet. If the fabric is too wet you will get blurred images. You can use a spray bottle of water to spritz the fabric. Lay out the leaves you want to use on top of the sheet. I find spring and Autumn foliage gives the best (but different) prints. You can always freeze leaves and rehydrate them to use in your work. I have stored frozen leaves for a couple of years on a shelf in my freezer and they are fine. Just bring them back to normal by rehydrating in a bowl of water and pat dry. Remember, you will get a different effect for leaves that are placed tops side down to leaves placed underside down.

Soak some paper towel in a ferrous sulphate solution (refer What is an iron blanket) and place this over the leaves. To get a really tight bundle put a weight (like a 6 pack of soda) on one end of the laid out fabric. You can roll without anything but I find the use of a dowel or aluminium rod makes bundling easier. Just start by rolling the end away from the weight a little bit. Lift the fabric a little and apply tension as you roll so your bundle is nice and tight.

When you get to the end you can secure the bundle with some twine. If you tie the twice really tightly you may get interesting marks on the prints.

If you are wanting to work with a wider fabric pile you may need to use plastic tubing. This is much more difficult to roll but you can then coil it in your steamer.

The bundle now needs to be steamed for about 2 hours. Do not place the bundle directly into the water at the steamer base. Use a brick or something so the bundle is clear of the water.

You may need to keep an eye on the water level to be sure it does not evaporate away during the steaming process. You can place several bundles in the same steamer if you have room.

Suggestions for steaming are: are multi layered vegetable steamer, a slow cooker ( turkey roaster in the US), a fish steamer. I have managed to pick all of these up quite cheaply at a thrift/recycle depot.

Be careful when you remove the bundle as it will be very hot. You can leave it till it is cold to unwrap if you are patient enough. I am always over keen to see what I have created. This is like unwrapping a Christmas box and very exciting

Eco prints can make great starting points for printing yardage from companies like Spoonflower. And you can manipulate them to created colour variations

A print that I used to create yardage from