Bundle dyeing

A 60- SECOND INSIGHT INTO A NEW PERSONAL CHALLENGE

THE IDEA OF natural dyeing has long appealed but my desire to give it a go has always been tempered by the long list of equipment required and getting my head around the process. Bundle dyeing, sometimes called eco-printing, is a contemporary process that only takes around an hour to get results. It uses the colours from individual leaves, petals and seeds to leave gentle traces upon the fabric.

I tried it out under the expert guidance of Babs of Botanical Inks (botanicalinks.com), who runs classes around the south of England, but it’s a process easily repeatable at home without making too much mess. A piece of natural cloth (we used a soft silk) is spritzed with vinegar, and your gathered materials – whether petals, leaves, or even leftover pulp from juice-making – are scattered across the cloth. The fabric is then tightly folded, or rolled, spritzed and another layer of materials added. That continues until it’s down to a small bundle, which can be steamed, or left to its own devices in a glass jar for a week to a month.

It’s a gently enjoyable process – feeling the leaves and petals through your fingers as you place them – that can be taken at your own pace. The real magic, however, comes when the bundle is unfolded and you get the first glimpses of the colours and patterns that have been imprinted onto the fabric, nature’s alchemy at work. Each piece of cloth is unique, a marker of that moment in time.