And What About a Dirty Pot

The beginning of a dirty pot on top of my brazier. You can see I have added a piece of iron, onion skins, some eucalyptus and other foliage

A dirty pot is usually maintained out of doors. It is a slow eco print method for gaining not so precise images and can be added to indefinitely until the water starts to go sour. I have used an old aluminium jam pan which is probably not the best option as the aluminium may alter the colours gained. The fabric is bundled - often with more foliage and maybe some rusty iron pieces and placed in the pot and simmered for an indefinite length of time. The bundles are often not as precise as in the steaming method as the object is to cover the fabric with natural dyes in a random fashion.

Below I show you two examples from the dirty pot of animal fibres - one with the traditional bundling technique and one with a random bundling or wrapping of the fabric around items to cover the surface of the fabric

A piece of silk bundled in the traditional manner and placed in the dirty pot for about a day

An old woollen blanket roughly bundled with leaves and rusty iron and simmered in the dirty pot for about a day and a half

Eco dying as a base for hand stitching

Stitching and embellishing the leaf shapes is one alternative but eco dyed fabric also makes a lovely base for stitching on, especially if it is chosen to fit the subject matter. This small picture demonstrates some eco printed fabric with an outline stitch in simple running stitch. I traced the outline of a photograph (enlarged on the computer) of my granddaughter’s face onto tissue paper. Then I stitched through the tissue paper to transfer the image to the fabric. This is a method Sue Stone (UK) often uses for transferring images to stitch. Once the paper is in place you can run the blunt end of the needle along the stitch line and keeping tension over the stitches so they don’t pull, gently pull away the tissue paper. I like the monochromatic look that this piece has described.