Couldn’t help titling this blog entry with cheap pun. It accurately describes this experiment. For yesterday’s printing, I spent a lot of time before the day making homemade aluminum acetate to mordant, madder and cochineal dyes for blankets. I scoured and mordanted cotton aprons. (The paper would be painted with aluminum acetate the day of printing.)

I knew that madder would be a hard dye to manipulate, but since it is so open to producing a variety of colors, it is worth studying. We learned a lot from this experiment. One thing is paper responds much differently than fabric.

I am lucky that my partner was present. Deb is much more a scientist than I. She came prepared with her trusty notebook and keen eye. She knows me well. I’m focused but not always on the task at hand. I always operate on the “what if” and she focuses on the task at hand. We work well as a team. I loved our results even though I would not repeat them with fabric again. There, I learned that a separate session dyeing the fabric before ecoprinting is the way to go. I think. (Next experiment is brewing in my head.)

Paper on the other hand works well. Our friend, Mish, came to print with us. She is great and comes with lots of questions. Too bad we will not have her the rest of the summer. She is off to her second home in the South. She will happily take her new prints from our day experimenting.

For those of you wanting some of the things I learned, here goes. I believe the homemade aluminum acetate works well as a mordant. I will put the recipe in the how to folder. Madder hates high heat so steam at a simmer 140 - 160 degrees fahrenheit for an hour and a half. If you can wait, leave overnight and unwrap in morning. (We didn’t. Who can? It’s like Christmas morning.) What I plan to do next is try to dye fabric ahead of printing for a more even coverage and control. I might try using dye to paint paper before printing. Please share if you have suggestions in comments. Thanks in advance.