If you saw my facebook post, you will have seen a little but about eco-printing. Basically it’s a technique to use the natural dyes present in foliage to print on fabric. Caroline had tried it and thought it might be fun to do together, and it’s less messy than our dyeing extravaganza of last year!

We used a silk/wool mix and some cotton, which had to be pre-prepared by soaking in soy milk for a day. Caroline had gathered some foliage (including eucalyptus leaves of various types, oak and blackberry), and so we went down to her studio, about 20 minutes away near Napa City, to do the messy part of dipping the fabric in diluted vinegar, the leaves in ferrous sulphate, arranging the leaves on the fabric, sandwiching it with gladwrap and rolling around a piece of PVC pipe.

Then it was back to her place to steam the rolls in Dan’s wood steamer for a couple of hours.

After the break for Thanksgiving festivities we unrolled our cooled bundles yesterday. The effect is interesting, and I’ll be able to take it home as there’s no residual foliage but it will take a month for the colour to cure enough to be washed.

After doing that we headed to Sonoma, about an hour in the rain, for a bit of a look around and for a visit to a quilt shop. Unfortunately no photos, it was just too wet! We did have a very enjoyable wine tasting though – at the tasting room in town of a winery called Fulcrum who make pinot noir, chardonnay and savignon blanc. A nice variation from some of the amazing cabernet we’ve had at Caroline and Dan’s.

Wine tasting here is generally not free – in the Napa Valley we paid $40 per head – quite moderate (!) in an area where the sky can be the limit! In Sonoma we paid $25 per head – refunded as we bought some wine. In general the set up for tasting is a bit more elaborate – no glasses on top of an old barrel in the corner of the winery here!

So here are a few shots of the eco printing and the tasting facilities at Brasswood, the tasting facility we went to near St Helena here in the Napa.