Easy flower pounding with cosmos flowers
Flower pounding or "tatakizome" is an ancient Japanese technique of hammering plants onto fibres to transfer the colour and patterns of the leaves & flowers onto the fabric. I love to use this technique for covering up stains on shirts and pants, it’s perfect for upcycling! I posted a reel using this technique and it went slightly viral (thank you!) so this blog post is long overdue!
What you’ll need:
pre-mordanted fabric (natural fibre, such as cotton or linen works best)
flowers - I used purple cosmos flowers (and one sulfur cosmos)
hammer
hard work surface
You can find the reels to this tutorial here and here.
DISCLAIMER: the color of the purple cosmos flowers will be pink / purple while the shirt is wet and will shift to green / blue once dry. The color outcome depends on the color shade / intensity of your flower.
Step 1
Take your shirt out of the mordant bath and squeeze out as much water as possible until the shirt is damp. This step is vital to achieve clear flower shapes. The more water you’re able to squeeze out of the fabric the better. Otherwise the print might blur later.
Step 2
Turn the shirt inside out and place it on a clean surface/work top.
Now take a flower, remove the stem and place it between the fabric layers. Pay attention that the top of the flower is facing the front of the shirt.
Step 3
Take your hammer and carefully hit the flower petals and the center of the flower. You might need to keep hammering a couple of times until all the color of the petals is transferred to the fabric. Remove the leftover petals, making sure no plant material touches other parts of the fabric, as it will leave stains.
Step 4
Repeat Step 3 with as many flowers as you like. Then let the shirt dry horizontally. Once dry you can iron the shirt to further enhance the vibrance of the natural color. This step is optional but it also helps to fix the color.
Step 5
After 2-3 days wash the shirt with ph-neutral eco detergent such as wool & silk detergent. This way the color will stay for a long time.
This is the shirt about 3 months after dyeing. You can see that the color has faded slightly after 3 months of wearing it in the sun, but the print is still strong.
Other flowers / leaves that work well for flower pounding:
Sulfur cosmos
Cereopsis
Marigold petals
Nettel leaves
