Often called, Smoke Bush, the Cotinus is currently in full flower here in the UK. The plant produces dark, reddish-purple leaves with tiny, frothy flowers, on long stems, like billowing clouds of smoke, all over the top, hence it’s name

It is now that these dramatically dark leaves are perfect for eco printing, surrendering their pigments to produce the most incredible range of colours! It is one of the most exciting leaves I have found to work with, as very few others will produce such a wealth of blue hues.

In my experience, the leaves print from yellow, through shades of blue and into strong mauves whilst their pigment is at its strongest. But as it’s all down to nature, you should be aware that the same plant may well produce leaves with very different levels of pigment in, dependent upon the location, the time of year, the weather and even the day of the week! To me, that is the excitement of this creative practice and whilst there is a definite science behind eco printing, I am much more of an artist than a scientist!

I sometimes prefer the blanket prints to the scarves, but nothing could compare to this silk beauty!

have been working with Cotinus Coggygria ‘Royal Purple’, a deciduous shrub, which happens to grow in full sun at the end of my neighbour’s drive. I am indebted to her, for her generosity and I can often be found sustainably harvesting new plant material from her beautiful garden! The maturity of this particular bush means I can collect large leaves to print with, and I suspect this maturity has also had an impact on the quality of the pigments contained within the leaves.

In this instance, I have been working simply, without dyes, printing the Cotinus leaves onto a natural silk background. The colours have been astounding! A simple mordant ensures that the pigments will remain within the silk and an iron blanket encourages a crisper result.

A mordant is a naturally occurring metal salt and is necessary to fix colour pigments, tannins or dyes. It bonds to the fibres in the fabric and enables the pigments to fix strongly to the mordant. In this case, the mordant I have used is Potassium Aluminium Sulphate. PAS sounds a little bit scary, but is widely available and perfectly safe to use, you will find it is used in the process of pickling foods and in fact is found in baking powder too.

You can seek to influence the colour of the prints very slightly by using different mordants with your target fabric. If required, once printed, the colours can sometimes be softened, saddened or brightened by post mordanting. This, however, is not a technique I use often in my practice and these colours certainly didn’t require an extra lift!

For the purposes of this particular silk scarf, the leaves were all placed underside down, often referred to as moon side down. The leaves release more of their pigments and tannins from their softer underside.

Interestingly, the top of the leaf or the sun side, will also produce a print, in this case, onto the surface of the iron blanket.

If you would like to own an entirely unique eco printed silk scarf for yourself, you will find all of my artisan creations in my online gallery at the British Craft House and I will be printing more of this extraordinary plant in the coming weeks.Rather unusually for me, I have one of these particularly beautiful silk scarves hanging in my own wardrobe just now. I am so looking forward to wearing it as it is very rare that I keep any of the pieces that I create.

As for my lovely neighbour? She too can be seen out and about in a very pretty, silk chiffon scarf, botanically printed with the Cotinus leaves from her very own garden!

Please let me know if you have enjoyed this little insight into my creative lifestyle and do look out for more of my ramblings in the future!

Louise x