Printing With Leaves

At this time of year, in late spring and early summer before the summer solstice, everything is so beautifully green.

The leaves are lovely in the autumn, and earlier in the spring there is blossom, but this time of year is wonderful too.

As I’ve said before, it’s easy to look outside, at the trees or fields, and think, “Green!” forgetting that it’s not just one kind of green. Taking a little bit of time to really notice reveals that there are all sorts of green, from light and quite yellowish, through to much darker.

Kinds of leaves are different as well, depending on the type of plant. They might have lobes, or not, smooth edges or toothed edges, or be long and thin, or wider.

Even leaves from the same plant will have differences. It’s fascinating how even things that look quite similar are never exactly the same. No two leaves will be identical, even from the same tree.

With this in mind, I wanted to do something else creative involving leaves. This time last year, I experimented a little bit with printing with flowers, and with pressing leaves into clay.

This time I decided to try printing with leaves onto fabric, then embroidering the prints.

I didn’t have any fabric paint, and a quick Google predictably brought up plenty of bizarre do-it-yourself alternatives. I didn’t fancy messing about with emulsion paint and whatever else they suggested mixing with it. I have no plans to wash the prints, so I used gouache as that is what I had and hoped for the best.

The prints turned out beautifully! I printed onto a piece of fabric cut from an old sheet that had a big rip in it. I couldn’t bear to throw it away because aside from the tear, there was an awful lot of usable fabric.

The white of the sheet was too bright, so I dyed the bit of sheet with green tea first. As I had discovered on a previous occasion, the tea didn’t dye the sheet green! The colour is very similar to that of black tea, just less harsh. Having no plans to wash it meant that I didn’t have to worry too much about it being entirely colour fast. So I boiled up some green tea in a pan, strained out the leaves, then let the fabric sit in the tea for an hour or two. Then after a quick rinse, I hung it out on the washing line to dry.

I collected some leaves from my garden, making sure I had some variety of sizes and shapes. Then I was ready to start printing!

One advantage with gouache is that it’s very easy to use, the colours mix nicely and it doesn’t smell peculiar. So I chose one yellow and one blue, and mixed up some different shades of green. Sticking to the same yellow and green gives the thing cohesion, which is why it’s not normally necessary to have dozens of different colours.

Once it was dry, I added a little bit of backstitch to some of the leaves in gold thread.

It felt really good to make something just for fun, with no expectations of perfection or any plan for what to do with it. I actually like the results of my printing with leaves, and I might pop it in a frame and hang it up somewhere, but in the end it was an experiment, and experiments don’t always work the first time.

If you like the idea of this kind of thing (I call them creative invitations), you might like The Wild Blossom Companion. It’s a gentle, monthly, themed guide for creative people, and it includes creative invitations and journaling prompts, as well as some lovely quotes and a little reflective piece to read. You can find out more about The Wild Blossom Companion here.