A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2004 printing fabric with flower

I was this once on HGTV and thought it was cool. You take a piece of muslin (white or off white) get some nice flowers that you like...ones with definate colors....like petunias have purple and white on them. Put the flowers on a cutting board, place the fabric over top of them, take a CLEAN hammer and tap the fabric over the flower. Keep tapping until you get the entire flower printed onto the fabric. The print will actually look like the flower! Use all different flowers of different colors and you have a neat print that you can frame. They did ones that looked like boquets and such. I can't remember if you can wash the fabric or not tho. I'll have to look into that. I believe it was on the Carol Duvall show.

Oh yeah! This is so cool: my mom did this with us when we were kids, but we just used green leaves. I was thinking about doing it again recently so I had her send me the instructions. I'll find them tomorrow and post her suggestions. It involved using a certain chemical so that the colors would be more vibrant and you could wash it.

Not much help right now, but it's coming!

What a cool idea to do with my 5 and 10 yr. old nieces!!!

not sure, but it is probably vinegar. if you wash anything that has good colors that you want to keep (and it is a cotton/muslin fabric) you should wash it with vinegar and no soap the first time. works great! (that's why you have to use vinegar in the egg dyes at easter)

Okay, my mom's way is a little more complicated and involves ferrous sulfate (which you can't really get your hands on unless you know or are a chemistry teacher, or so I'm told). This website has a brilliant idea: pound the flowers onto iron-on transfer paper and viola: washable flower prints! Check this place out for really good ideas on this topic:

http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/flowerdye.shtml

Happy pounding!