I really, really enjoy eco printing silk scarves. Not sure why it’s so nice, I normally don’t gravitate towards projects with an element of surprise and these have been full of surprises. I never know how it’s going to turn out. So far I’ve dyed up around 8 meters of silk. I found a webshop that sold 3 meter lengths of ‘silk crepe for dyeing’ and I got 6 meters of it. I then cut that into 1.8 meter lengths and 35 cm widths to get 12 scarves out of 6 meters. Had some leftovers for some more experimentation and decided that I didn’t yet have enough of the silk dying experience, so I ordered 6 more meters and have since made four more scarves.
The first batch you’ve already seen, but I’ve now actually hemmed them with a ‘rolled hem’ on the serger. From that batch, I learned that the bramble and what I think is a maple worked really well. The second batch had less stellar results. Most came out so light that you could barely see them, this included some weeds from outside my house (my plant determination app thinks its Vinca major?), leaves from the tree outside my house – invisible and therefore destined to be overdyed, one unknown tree and something that I just completely forgot.
Roof Terrace Fruit
Strawberry, apple, pear, red currant & white currant
Quercus robur – Common oak 
Unclear and since gifted
The third batch, however, had some really good ones. chestnut leaves from the tree at work, hazelnut leaves from my hometown, something from the road to work with thorns and a collage of fruit plants from my roof terrace. The only one that was slightly disappointing was the fruit collage as only the strawberry gave a very clear print and the rest was quite blobby.
Unclear 
Corylus avellana – Common Hazelnut 
Ginkgo biloba
Then there was some more experimenting but that didn’t turn out so well, so I only finished the one where I put flowers on (Common ragworth). This resulted in a bit of a polka dot effect, but much darker than I expected. Not sure it’s as lovely as I’d imagined, but at least I now know what it would do if you put this type of flower in an iron bath.
Rubus caesius – Dewberry / bramble 
Vinca major variegata – Greater periwinkle 
Acer campestre (?) – Field maple
So at some point last week, I decided that it would be a lovely idea to actually know which plants all my scarves came from. So I set out to collect leaves from all the places that I’d harvested them from initially to determine the species and dry them. This also meant that I couldn’t help myself and I got more leaves. I opted for a few that worked the best (more chestnut!) and some that I found along the way.
Aesculus hippocastanum – Horse chestnut 
Horse chestnut + Field maple + Common oak 
Jacobaea vulgaris – Common ragworth
I collected some chestnut leaves because they make the best print. Then while cycling around, I found some really cool looking leaves with five leaflets that turned out to be Virginia creeper close to the original Ginkgo. While passing another big tree next to my former home, the leaves from a Red maple were collected. The Black poplar was the last I took with me. This one has an alternating pattern of back/front of the leaves and you can sort of see that. This one is also a prime example of how folds leave blank spaces in the print.
Parthenocissus – Virginia creeper 
Populus nigra – Black poplar 
Acer rubrum – Red maple
Conclusion is that I’ve really enjoyed this dying process and with winter starting, I don’t have many more opportunities. The only problem with this hobby is that it produces way more items than I actually personally need. There’s only so much gifting I can do to get rid of them. Sometimes I wish that my hobbies didn’t amount to so much stuff… Ah well, at least these take up way less space than plushies.
