Growing Home
Exploring sustainably created printed textiles
Growing Home explores the abundance of natural dye plants grown throughout Lancashire.
It is incredible what you can find once you start looking. The annoying weeds down your garden path or the dried-out bush you've meant to prune for the winter–all with the possibility of creating the most beautiful colours.
Circularity is something I strive to achieve in my practice. By sourcing fabrics second-hand instead of buying new ones, I look at ways to reduce textile waste in local landfills. Mode Hotels, a local luxury hotel company, were kind enough to donate their waste bed linen that, once torn or stained, can no longer be used for its original purpose but can be repurposed by me.
I thoroughly document my findings through sketchbooks, recipe books and graphs, exploring the depth of colour you can achieve and the vast array of plants that produce colour, all from my home in Lancashire.
Traditional crafts have been a vital companion to my experiments. I continuously explore the possibility of creating less harmful prints, utilising hand-carved wood blocks, screen printing and Victorian flower pressing.
The ancient practice of patchwork has helped me repurpose waste fabric, giving it new life through stitch and print, mapping the locations of my foraged dye plants and creating abstract pieces.
Why do we continue to harm the environment? Is there no other way? Can textiles be the leading force for change?
Left, Sample from my final collection showing locations throughout Lancashire where I foraged for dye plants.
Above, Sample based on birds eye view of fields in Lancashire
The art of flower pressing
I explored Victorian flower pressing as a method to preserve and document the seasonal plant life of Lancashire. It is a beautiful way to capture a moment of time in the plants life which can last for hundreds of years, possibly longer than the plant species itself. These pressings were vital references when designing prints
Colour creation
I cataloged all my findings with natural dyes, extracting pigments etc. This helps with future dying as I have something to refer back to. I'm gradually building my cataloge of colours I can create from Plants collected within Lancashire.
Print exploration
An important aspect to this project was understanding the more 'natural' methods of creating printed textiles. I tested out a wide variety of techniques including printing with natural pastes, forraged flowers, resist dying etc.
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