Episode #17: How to Upcycle Clothes Through Natural Dyeing and Eco Printing

Are you interested in learning how to upcycle fabrics through natural dyeing? Or creating your very own unique botanical print? Listen in to this podcast episode where I chat with Victoria Martinez Azaro with La Creative Mama.

Victoria has a passion for sustainable crafts such as natural dyeing, eco printing, upcycling and creative sewing. Through her blog La Creative Mama, Victoria helps women get creative through the amazing world of fabric crafts such as upcycling though embroidery, sewing, eco printing and natural dyeing.

In this episode we cover:

• What exactly is natural dyeing and eco printing?

• The materials you need for natural dyeing and eco printing

• How a beginner can get started quickly and easily

Mentioned In This Episode

• Where you can find Victoria: Website

• Victoria's gift: List of the Best Plants to Use for Eco Printing and Natural Dyeing Guide

• Don't forget to join our wait list for the next HobbyScool online learning summit. Our summits are free to attend and you can be the first to know when the next summit launches by getting on the wait list here.

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Transcript:

00:00:02

And today, my special guest is Victoria from lacreativemamma.com. And we're going to be talking about upcycling fabrics and clothes through natural dying and eco printing. Victoria, thank you so much for joining me. I am very excited to jump into this topic with you today. It's a topic that I know very little to nothing about. So I know I'm going to personally have a lot of questions for you, but before we begin.

00:00:33

Can you tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you help people?

00:00:39

Sure. Thank you destiny, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm always happy to share my upcycling message to the world.

00:00:49

I started, I am. I started. I've got many years ago now, like 25 years ago. I trained as a fashion designer in my home country, Argentina, and through my career I got to travel to Europe and Asia. And I finally settled here in New Zealand, where I'm based and working in the fashion industry. You know, I started in the 90s. I got to see a lot of things that, you know, inherent to the fashion industry that are, you know, they shocked me, you know, unethical treatment.

00:01:20

Of, you know, the workers very unsustainable practices when it came to the the way they died and the colored the fabrics and the processes in general that they were you know, using in the fashion industry. So I started back here in New Zealand, I did a Masters degree in Fine Arts and I ended up in the academic world and I decided that I would devote my professional life to researching more ethical and sustainable ways to.

00:01:50

You know, create fashion and design fabrics and so on. So I started researching natural dyeing and eco printing as ways to achieve this. And that's how I got started into, you know, gathering, you know, trees and plants and flowers that I had around me here in New Zealand and researching other natural dyes that, you know, were abroad. And I started in creating this. Beautiful.

00:02:20

Color palettes, all naturally based on silks and cottons and wool fabrics and yarns. And I started teaching and spreading this message in the fashion degree that I was teaching and I was, I was actually teaching fashion sustainability at the time and.

00:02:39

Fast forward a few years, then I decided to start community workshops to spread this message a little bit further. And and then the pandemic came. So I took all of this online and here we are now two years on I started like Creative Mama blog and and now I devote my time full time to to teaching anyone who is interested. I call them my creative Mamas because they they're usually women and they're super creative that come to me.

00:03:09

And I teach them how to do echo printing on fabrics, which is botanical prints and fabrics, how to use plants, leaves, flowers, barks to create solid colors on yarns, and how to upcycle fabrics and clothes that they might already have doing all these techniques. So yeah, that's that's kind of like the story of how I got started and where I'm at now.

00:03:34

Well I I just I definitely want to dig right in to all of this with you and and the first question I have for you and I'm, I'm I don't I think I know what it is but I'm not 100% sure. Can you walk us through what is natural dying and eco printing?

00:03:54

Sure. Sorry I took like everyone else. But yeah, not. Not that many people. Not so natural dye. Let's start with natural during natural dying is.

00:04:04

It's a way to extract the the color that is inherent to certain plants. It can be. This actually leaves, tree leaves, flowers, barks from trees, insects such as cochineal bugs, insects. That's an insect, you know, foods such as onion skins, avocados, skins and stones. So there are certain natural plants and insects and you know.

00:04:34

That have good quality, good dying qualities to them. So the process of natural dying it's simply extracting those dyes which we do it in the extraction step and once you extract that dye you end up with a, you know a pot of liquid that is the golden liquid because it's it's it's got colour to it. And the other bit of natural dying is that you will prepare your fabrics appropriately. So depending on whether you're using.

00:05:05

Cotton or silk or wool or linen, for example, you will.

00:05:11

We call it scouring and mordanting, which is simply scouring means cleaning the fabric very, very well. So you get rid of all the, you know, the mud have the there might be some oils or some chemical treatments. So we're going to get rid of all of those and then we're going to more than them. And for more hunting we use aluminum acetate and aluminium sulphate, which you can, you know, easily get it and all you're doing when you're monitoring is making sure that the fabric is being.

00:05:41

Opened, so you're opening the fabric and then once that fabric is open we are going to immerse it in our liquid dye liquid and that's it. That's and that's how you die naturally. And once once that fabric is, if you prepare your fabric well and the the fabric will receive the color, then that color is there to stay. It shouldn't fight and you should be able to wash it, rinse it, Chuck it in the washing machine and that color is there to stay.

00:06:11

It will fight like any other chemical. Color. Will fight, you know, but it's and you can create beautiful Reds, pinks, bright, bright, you know, very vibrant colour. Natural dyeing doesn't mean that you're going to get beige and Browns.

00:06:26

And that was going to be one of the questions I had for you when when you throw it in the washing machine, will all of that dye come off? But it sounds like it won't.

00:06:35

Well, and this is the thing, this thing and This is why I spent you know all my time teaching this techniques because you need to the you know either. In my blog I teach an 8 I call it like Creative Mama natural dyeing method. So it's an 8 step process each. Each process needs to be done in a particular order and in a particular way. So sorry each step.

00:06:55

Of the process. So if you follow those those steps in the correct order, you guarantee really good results. But there's a caveat. You need to use certain dyes because what typically happens is that you know, someone will, you know, will call me and say, hey Victoria, I followed all the steps but I got no colour. And then when I asked them, OK, but what natural dye did you use? And they would say carrots or red coverage, I'm thinking like well, but those are not the natural dyes.

00:07:26

But I'd tell you to use ohh. Yeah, but that's what I had at home. So no, no, no, you can't do that. You need to, you need to use a specific process plus specific dyes. And that is what I guarantee you will get. Beautiful, natural, bright, long lasting color. But it's a two, it's a two thing. It's you need to do both things. You need to follow the process and you need to use a set of particular dyes, which we know that will deliver you good.

00:07:56

Color.

00:07:58

So what about eco printing? What exactly is that?

00:08:02

So with eco printing, it's a really beautiful practice because you can get very good results very, very quickly. Again, you need to follow a certain, you know, a certain process, very easy process. But all you're doing with the printing is choosing certain flowers and certain leaves. And we're creating botanical prints, you know, usually with the printing.

00:08:26

So again, you're going to prepare your fabrics appropriately. And once that fabric is ready to receive the color of the prints, all we're going to do is we're going to sandwich certain leaves and flowers in between 2 layers of fabric. And then all you need to do is roll a little bundle. So we roll this little bundles and then we tie them really tightly with string or rubber bands and then you steam them for a good hour. And that's why, I mean, it's just so quick.

00:08:56

And then you leave it on the steamer. And then you come back and every time you open one of these little echo printed bundles, it's like ohh such a joyous moment because you really never know exactly what you're going to get.

00:09:09

I teach a process in which you should be able to, you know, anticipate 80%. I always say I can't teach you how to anticipate 80% of the result, but 20% is a surprise. You know the surprise element to it.

00:09:24

So I love that. So you're to some extent you're getting different designs which each with each one that you do.

00:09:30

Yeah, yeah. And that's the beauty of it. And and that's the thing because you know when you when you're doing natural dying or eco printing, you are actually designing with nature. So for starters, you're using natural materials that are around you, which is beautiful because like in my case, I was able to really connect with my new environment with New Zealand, which was my new home.

00:09:54

So I made a point of choosing the tree. I started with the trees around my neighborhood. Then I started planting my own dye garden, which created a really nice bond between me and my new home and, you know, my garden.

00:10:09

But you're really designing with nature. So it's a very organic process and you know, nature surprises us, right. So you. You really. Yeah. And and the other thing that's really that is very important is that say for example, I say to you, OK, let's just let's just make friends with eucalyptus and you know you are going to get your eucalyptus which is in your, you know, in your own neighborhood. And I use my eucalyptus which is in my garden or my neighborhood and because this soil.

00:10:39

Is different in each area. We're probably going to get slightly different colours from it and that's what I love, you know, it's just so personal and so organic and so surprising.

00:10:52

So Victoria, let's say that somebody wants to get started. They want to dip their toes into this natural dying and eco printing process that you know that you've designed. How do they get started? Where do they go? What supplies do they need?

00:11:09

Yeah, well, it's so. Look, the first thing to note is that it's really it's a really easy practice. Both of them. Natural dynamical predicts there super easy what it is also very very easy to get confused. So my suggestion is.

00:11:23

That you choose someone that knows what they're doing and you follow the process. And there's a lot of people that are, you know, currently teaching these these techniques now. And the other thing is that you really don't need much to get started. The only thing you need is a few pots and pans that you shouldn't be using for cooking after you've used them for this, just for safety.

00:11:47

So you, for example, for ECHO printing, you just need a steamer and then you need some plastic barriers because that's what you know. We're going to avoid the prints going on places in the fabrics that you don't, we don't want. We need natural materials such as cotton, 100% cotton, 100% silk, 100% wool fabric.

00:12:08

Very important thing to note is that eco printing and natural dyeing they only work with natural fibers so.

00:12:15

I always say to my students, you know, you either buy the fabrics and you know you talk to the people that you buy them from and you know what you're buying. Or if you're up cycling, for example AT shirt, go and check out the composition label of the T-shirt and when in doubt you can do a very, very easy burn test, which is what you do is like you burn a little bit of the fabric and then if the fabric.

00:12:41

Has a like a, you know, it goes in flames a little bit. I mean, right, there's a little bit of a flame and the fabric disintegrates. That means it's a natural fiber. If the, if the fabric melts away of the yarn, melts away, it means it's synthetic. So don't spend your time, don't it's a waste of time doing this, this process because it's, it's just not going to take the colour.

00:13:03

And so once you have those basic and then you need a dye like flowers and leaves or insects like cochineal for example insects you you know just you follow the the dyes that and if you go to my blog I've got lots of lists of the natural materials that that you can use but.

00:13:23

To guarantee so the other thing that I say to my students is like you need a little bit of a toolkit. So a few basic natural dyes that will give you color all year round. So I usually say to them, OK, just get the things that you can get from your kitchen, so such as avocado and onion skins and black tea so you can easily get that all year round. And then choose two or three things that you know you can get from around your neighborhood, such as an eucalyptus tree and oak.

00:13:53

3 Maple tree and those will give you like beautiful Browns and golds and yellows.

00:14:00

And then you can buy Mother Roach, which will give you rate, and you can buy cochineal dye, which will give you bright pink. And you can maybe buy logwood dye that will give you purple. So just without spending much money at all, you, you know, you can really create a beautiful color palette all year round. So yeah, does that answer your question, destiny.

00:14:23

Yeah, I mean when you're talking about the trees, the question that kind of popped in my mind and this might be a kind of a stupid question, but I'm going to.

00:14:30

That's good. Anyway. Let's just say you're a Maple tree or an oak tree. When the trees change colors, do you get a different color of dye?

00:14:41

From you mean each tree has different colors? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for example when I talk about oak tree, the oak tree I usage. So I use the leaves mainly for eco printing. So what I do is see here in New Zealand we are in spring. So what I'm doing at the moment I am collecting all the oak trees, all the oak leaves that I can see on the ground and you know if an oak tree it's a little bit of a trim there I am trimming the tree and what I would normally do is I other.

00:15:11

Some fresh and or I collect them for their winter, I put them in, I make them go flat and dry them for the winter. And that part that leave will give me a beautiful depends on how I the treatment that I do for echo printing. But it naturally gives me like a beautiful brownie Goldie print. But the oak tree has the icons as well, so the icons I would normally use for natural dying. So I would boil the acorns and it will give me a beautiful gold colour.

00:15:41

And then that gold color, again depending on how you what the treatments that you do to that gold color, if you put a little bit of a modifier, for example iron, then you turn that gold color into dark charcoal grey.

00:15:58

But normally your oak tree in the United States and my oak tree in New Zealand will give us really constitution consistent similar results.

00:16:10

Well, if I'm using I don't have Maple trees here in New Zealand, but if I'm using eucalyptus for example, eucalyptus gives me a totally different colour and result from the oak trees.

00:16:21

Eucalyptus give him more of a gold red colour if I print it, and if I naturally die with you callippus, it gives me a like a bright yellow.

00:16:32

OK, so Victoria, let me ask you this. If somebody is ready to get this started, I think you have a free gift for them. Can you tell them where they can go and what they can get at your website too? I know you have a ton of resources.

00:16:47

There, yes. So you can get. So if you go into my website you can read the Ultimate Ultimate guide to natural dying. And I explained the step by step process of natural dying.

00:17:02

And there's also guides about eco printing, but I also have to really nice gifts. So one is the natural free natural dying guide, and that is I go I it's a printable little guide that you can download. So you get all the eight steps that I teach and I explain why and how to do them. And you can also get a list of the best 30.

00:17:31

Best leaves and plants to start your journey with eco printing, so that's my message today. Follow the process, but make sure that you're choosing the right natural dyes, whether for echo printing or natural dyeing. Otherwise it is a bit of a waste of time.

00:17:48

And we will make sure that those links are in the show notes, so everybody knows exactly where to go for your website and for the free gifts that you have for them.

00:17:58

That's great. That's.

00:17:59

Great. And thank you so much.

00:18:01

Victoria, for sharing all of these wonderful tips and tricks for us. I loved learning more about natural dying and eco printing with you.

00:18:12

Oh, thank you so much for having Destini and for spreading this this really cool way of upcycling and making the most of what we already have around us.

00:18:21

Thanks, Vic.

00:18:22

Thank you.