Yellow as the sun
May. 13th, 2021 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrI've got two Zoom meetings today, afternoon and evening, and a lot of pots to trim in the studio that just aren't ready yet. So I can't really get anything done there; instead, I convince Denise to come outside and play!
It's iris season here, the two-tone purples are blooming like crazy, the black is budding, the peach just opened it's first flower yesterday. And half a dozen yellow iris, bright as the sun, are scattered around the yard.
Denise has made iris-dyed paper before. The black blossoms, in particular, make a lovely sky blue paper, and the various purples dry green. We've never tried yellow, though. So that's what we decide to do.
Process: Set up a sawhorse table in the sun. Fill a plastic sweater box with water and leave it to warm up. Get out screens, couching cloths (pronounced "cooch-"), various plastic containers, a blender, the press. While I do all this, Denise looks for a jar of mordanted (treated with alum to bind colorants to fibers) white paper pulp. Then I go pick off all the wilted yellow blooms, throw them in the blender with some water, and reduce to a slurry.
After that, it's mix some pulp with a little iris slurry, pour into the screen and swish about. Pull straight up, drain, lay a couching cloth (usually a sheet of Pellon interfacing) down on the paper, press out the water, and transfer the wet sheet to the post (stack of other couched sheets.)
Rinse, repeat.
I also harvested some of the purple blooms and blended them up, did some sheets with both colors of iris, some only yellow or purple. When we run out of pulp, irises or energy, I put the stack of paper sheets into a press to squeeze out the extra water, and Denise transfers them to blotting paper.
It's iris season here, the two-tone purples are blooming like crazy, the black is budding, the peach just opened it's first flower yesterday. And half a dozen yellow iris, bright as the sun, are scattered around the yard.
Denise has made iris-dyed paper before. The black blossoms, in particular, make a lovely sky blue paper, and the various purples dry green. We've never tried yellow, though. So that's what we decide to do.
Process: Set up a sawhorse table in the sun. Fill a plastic sweater box with water and leave it to warm up. Get out screens, couching cloths (pronounced "cooch-"), various plastic containers, a blender, the press. While I do all this, Denise looks for a jar of mordanted (treated with alum to bind colorants to fibers) white paper pulp. Then I go pick off all the wilted yellow blooms, throw them in the blender with some water, and reduce to a slurry.
After that, it's mix some pulp with a little iris slurry, pour into the screen and swish about. Pull straight up, drain, lay a couching cloth (usually a sheet of Pellon interfacing) down on the paper, press out the water, and transfer the wet sheet to the post (stack of other couched sheets.)
Rinse, repeat.
I also harvested some of the purple blooms and blended them up, did some sheets with both colors of iris, some only yellow or purple. When we run out of pulp, irises or energy, I put the stack of paper sheets into a press to squeeze out the extra water, and Denise transfers them to blotting paper.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-14 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-14 06:31 pm (UTC)Every summer, during a month when I have no road shows, we set up in the back yard using my 10x10 booth canopy and just leave it for a month. Denise makes paper at her leisure, and we invite friends from Market, the book group and elsewhere to drop in and join her.
This summer, it looks like July is paper month. Possibly half of August, as the shows I've applied to are both in the latter half of the month.