Protect What You Are Thankful For

One of my favorite plants in the new dye garden is the Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia-Family: Saxifrage (Saxifragaceae).  I’ll be adding more varieties in the spring because I really appreciate how well it prints.

 foamflower-tiarella-cordifolia-saxifrage

tiarella-cordifolia-foamflower-web
Above there are 3 distinct prints of these leaves, one in the center and two on the bottom left.  As you can see, they print well when no other plant does!
tiarella-c-web
Tiarella cordifolia are the top three and bottom left beside the peony leaves to the right. They’re also a reliable printer.

And those lovely Wild Cranesbills! I’m trying to propogate the wild ones that I find into my garden. We’ll see if any of them took well enough to make it through the winter. I pick them from a few places in my own yard and from a couple of sites especially, around Lake Quannapowett.

wild-cranesbill-web
If you weren’t looking for these wild geraniums, you’d hardly notice them where they grow sparcely. So when I come across them I feel especially lucky!  They always release their pigments!

Then all of the varieties of Acers! Pretty sure this one’s a Red Maple.  On the left The fabric was dyed with Walnut and on the right with Oak Gall. On cotton, alum, soy, alum and dipped in ferrous sulfate.

walnut-oak-gall
This was not the best year for me printing with maples.  They frequently didn’t print at all, perhaps due to the drought here.  But all of a sudden, I found that some from my own yard were printing pretty well, so here’s the proof – you never know!

Need I say, I’m very thankful for all the leaves that bestow their pigments on my cloth!

Linking up with Nina’s Off The Wall Friday!  Happy holidays to all! Those things that we are grateful for have become all the more precious for many of us now! Let’s protect them and celebrate them.

“Walk Into a Forest, Breathe Deeply…”

From an article by Nancy Rose, Editor of Arnoldia

 

8 thoughts on “Protect What You Are Thankful For”

    1. Received your card when you sent it a while back – thanks so much – couldn’t respond at the time since we were selling our home and moving. I’ve been following your work for many months now and love to get your posts. Setting up a new studio to paint and sew!

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