I make pieces for walls and bodies constructed from patches and scraps of fabric and coloured with plant dyes made from leaves and water. No adjunct chemicals are used in the process, merely found scrap metals, food wastes and water sourced from the wild. It’s a method of working that means the residues from dyeing can be safely, even beneficially, returned to the earth. The cloth is acquired from the most sustainable sources I can find, Beautiful Silks [Victoria], the Hemp Gallery [NSW] and MilkyMerinoTM [NSW] as well as from thrift stores and from vintage dealers. I prefer to heat my cauldron with fuel gathered from our paddocks, as the carbon given off in burning is much the same as the carbon given off when the wood is left to rot, but I make sure to leave plenty as homes for local fauna.
Salvaged garments bear hidden records of the bodies that wore them. Dresses made from repurposed cloth become a compendium of stories written in marks that are added with stitch and dyes extracted from windfall leaves gathered in the course of wandering. They bear witness to past wearers and to the sources of the fibres, multi-layered maps of journeys both physical and metaphorical; making them helps me to make sense of the whirled.
India's blog
India Flint website
Second Skin book
Eco Colour book
Images courtesy of India Flint
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