Wildflower embroidered hapa zome fabric heart

 

Hello sweet friends,

Did I ever show you this embroidered heart I made years ago? I know I shared a glimpse once with a note telling you to go find the how-to-hapa-zome diy on another blog of mine. But that blog is set on private, so the link is no longer working. Time to share the diy and the heart itself here.

In my explorations in textile art I came across natural dyeing. One of the easiest ways to dye your fabrics in a natural way is to hammer the colours in the cloth. Literally.

Renowned master in eco dyeing India Flint calls this "hapa zome". It's Japanese for "leaf-dye".

More on hapa zome later in this post, but first I'd like to share some of the embroidery I did on my hapa zome heart.

Feather stitches, outline stitches, and French knots are some of the stitches I used. I'm not the neatest of embroiders, but I don't mind imperfect lines and stitches, because to me it seems to give my work more of the "wild" look of nature.

I added a tiny bit of paint on some spots of the heart for a little bit of contrast when I thought it needed it. 

So, what do you need to make your own hapa zome fabric? Gather some flowers and/or leaves. Just experiment which will give you the effect and colours you want. I used flowers of the Petunia and the Geranium.

Get yourself a hammer. Use a sturdy and flat surface to work on. Put some thick paper or (flat) card(board) on your surface. (I put first cardboard and then water colour paper.)

Put the fabric on the paper/cardboard. Put the flowers and leaves on top of that. Place them as you like. You will find your own designs and ways while experimenting.

On top of that you place another piece of thick paper (to protect your work from the hammer) or first another piece of fabric and then the paper. Now carefully beat with the hammer.

Check now and then to see if you get the result that you want. And adjust the pressure of your beats when needed.

 

 

When finished you can peel the remnants of the flowers and leaves off your cloth and paper.

After that I didn't wash the fabric. If you're going to use the fabric for clothes or other use for which the fabric needs to be washed, there are more steps. But since I use this fabric as a base layer for my art, I'm not going to wash it and have not tried these techniques. So I'm not sharing those here.

Instead of washing, I left it to dry and then I heat set it with an iron, so hopefully the colours will last longer.

Here's my result on the fabric: 

 

 

(A piece of old bed sheet by the way, great for experiments!)

And my paper:

The paper I didn't heat set of course! I don't know yet where I will use the paper for. But I do love the result. This was the paper that was lying under the fabric.

Let me know if you give it a try! Wishing you a joyful and colourful day,

xx Wen