natural dyeing with flower pounding
Flower pounding is a really approachable way to get into natural dyeing. All you need is flowers, a hammer, and some fabric. If you treat your fabric, you can use it to make garments or tote bags, or you could leave it untreated and use it to make a tapestry or piece of art.
Materials:
Flowers
Fabric (I used muslin)
Needle & thread or a sewing machine
Piece of fabric roughly the same size as your tapestry
You want to make sure you are pounding your flowers on a surface that you don’t mind getting dirty (and maybe even stained). I used a plastic folding table, but if you wanted to do this project inside, you could use a baking sheet to protect your surface.
Time: 1 hour for flower pounding, 3 hours for sewing the tapestry.
Step one: prep your fabric
Cut your fabric to size. If you want to do one large tapestry, I recommend cutting it either 19”x25”, or 17”x21" (this includes a half inch seam allowance on all sides). If you are wanting to do quilted squares, I recommend either doing 3”x3” squares or 5”x5” squares. I did 27 3”x3” squares for my tapestry.
After cutting your fabric, press with an iron.
Step two: choose your flowers
You want to pick flowers that will release a lot of pigment when you pound them. I don’t recommend any flowers that are really petal-heavy, like zinnias or sunflowers. I tried pounding both, and they hardly released any pigment. Harebells worked the best for me, as did amaranth. You might want to test a few flowers on some scrap fabric before starting your tapestry - it’s a lot of trial and error!
Step three: create your design
Arrange your flowers on your fabric. Then, lay an extra piece of fabric on top of your flower design to prepare it for pounding with the hammer.
For one large tapestry, fold the fabric in half to create a mirrored effect. For the quilt squares, you can dye two squares at once by using another square as your pounding padding.
Step four: pound the flowers
Using a hammer, pound on the flowers until you’ve extracted the pigment. This can take some patience and elbow grease. It also helps to slide the hammer head along the flowers while applying pressure.
Repeat this process until you have all your squares, or your entire tapestry, covered! I’ve seen people make really amazing textiles with flower dyeing, so just get creative with it. You really can’t go wrong.
Next, we’re going to make the tapestry.
Step five: create your tapestry front
This will look a little different depending on whether you chose to make one large tapestry, or a quilted tapestry.
If you are doing quilted squares, sew your squares together. I recommend sewing four squares together into larger squares, and then sewing those larger squares together.
If you are doing a larger tapestry, you can do a couple things here. You can either finish the edges by folding the sides under by 1/4” twice (1/2” total), press and sewing. Or, skip ahead to the next step and add a fabric backing to it.
Step six: add a fabric backing
If you made a non-quilted tapestry and finished the edges by folding them under, you can skip this step.
Cut out a piece of fabric identical in size to your tapestry. With right sides together, sew three sides of your tapestry to the backing with a 1/2” seam allowance. End your seams 1” from the top, and leave the top unsewn - we’re going to create a channel for the dowel rod.
Flip your tapestry so that the wrong, unfinished side is on the inside. At this point, you should have something resembling a large pillowcase.
Step seven: make a channel for the dowel rod
Press all of your seams, and then press the top, unfinished edge under by 1/2”. Sew it together on the outside of the tapestry, sewing as close to the top edge as possible. Then, sew another line 1/2” below the top, creating the channel for your dowel.
Step eight: add your dowel rod
This is the last step! Just slide in your dowel rod, and tie some yarn on the ends of the rod. My yarn was exactly the same length as the dowel rod, because it had some stretch in it.
I hope you enjoyed this project, and I would love to see your results! Comment down below if you have any questions :)