Liquidambar Leaf Contact Prints on Silk

For some years, I have pored over tantalising online images of fabric eco printed with Liquidambar leaves. I've never found any growing locally, and believe me, I've looked. Hard to miss, with those simple, five pointed leaf shapes and rich red autumn colours, a Liquidambar would stand out among the yellow and brown Welsh woodlands. The tree is an American native, also known as a sweetgum. In its natural habitat it can grow 50m tall. 
When I planted the one in this picture, my companion, Elinor Gotland, feared her days of sunbathing on the back lawn would soon be over.
"You want your head read, Beaut. That tree will overshadow the neighbourhood, never mind the garden."
"Chill your beans, Elinor. This variety is called Gum Ball and it won't grow more than a couple of metres high."
She gave me a sceptical look.
"That's what you said about the clematis that took over the back of the house. What's that stuff you're putting down the planting hole? Don't go feeding it too much manure."
"It's ericaceous soil. I'm digging it in to acidify our alkaline clay earth. Acid conditions will help the leaves develop a good autumn colour."
"One little bag of the ericaceous stuff will be about as much use as lace knickers on a frosty night. You'll never shift the pH of that whole border."
I stopped to lean on my spade.
"You start saving all your used tea bags and we'll have a cubic metre of acid mulch by Christmas."

The Gum Ball survived a wet and bitter cold winter and this autumn, the display of leaf colour has been a tribute to Elinor's capacity for tea drinking. I have been picking a few leaves for contact printing by rolling them up on plant dyed cloth with an iron blanket and steaming (details of method here) and found my home grown leaves do make decent iron blanket prints, clearly outlined and often filled with their own dye colour in a pink, brown or purple shade. This photo shows a couple of their five pointed leaf shapes on a silk scarf previously dyed a pale yellowy green in an ivy leaf dye bath.
Where they really stand out dramatically from the other leaves is shown in the very dark prints they leave behind on the iron blanket. As deep as oak leaves, so perhaps Liquidambar contains a lot of tannin.

I decided to have a closer look at Liquidambar leaves by dipping them in dilute iron solution and printing with them by steaming in a roll of plain white silk. At the same time, I could try to find out how much their visible autumn colour predicted their dye print colour and compare their prints with sycamore leaves, which you can see lined up on the lower row on this alum mordanted silk scarf.

The iron dip enabled both kinds of leaf to print silhouettes with patterns of veins. After washing and ironing, I'd say the iron prints look more delicate from green leaves, deeper from leaves that have changed from green to yellow and deepest from the red ones.

Of course, the darkness of the iron does obscure any dye colours. I think the Liquidambar leaves which had developed red autumn colours did leave a pinker cast within the shades of grey. I've often noticed people talking about spraying on vinegar before ecoprinting fabric. Alright, yes, I do know vinegar is not a mordant, but I did think maybe its acidity might modify and enhance red anthocyanin dye from the leaves. Here are two scarves after printing and allowing a couple of weeks to cure before washing and ironing. The one on the right was soaked in white vinegar before printing, the one on the left was just soaked in plain water.

I'd say the vinegar increased the yellow halo, which I assume comes from leaf dye tracking through the damp silk during steaming. It does look as though vinegar did slightly deepen the pinkish brown colour from the red Liquidambar leaves. All in all, not fabulous results, I think I'll overdye these scarves with some flower prints next summer. Next autumn, I'll try a similar experiment using a iron blanket instead of dipping the leaves in iron solution. As Elinor Gotland pointed out, some of the old cotton sheet I've cut up to make iron blankets this autumn looks more attractive than the silk I'd hoped to print.

Ginkgo Leaves for Dyeing and Contact Printing

"The end is nigh, Beaut." 
My companion, Elinor Gotland, addressed this apocalyptic comment to my backside, as I bent to gather up yet more leaves.
"It's too late for me to start repenting. I'm too old. Must be nearly twenty years since I planted this ginkgo tree."
"The end of Autumn is nigh, not the end of the world. Or you, you mad old trout."

I straightened my back and sighed.
"Actually, I am repenting, Elinor, regretting my lack of forward planning. I never thought about how tall that ginkgo seed would grow, in another twenty years this could be an enormous tree. I should have pruned off at least a branch or two before the new greenhouse was put up."
"Oh, don't be so gloomy. I meant the end of falling leaves is nigh. The end of sweeping them up."
"And the end of my autumn leaf contact printing. There were so many more experiments I meant to do. Winter is nearly here, why didn't I use more of these leaves while I had the chance?"

"Oh, for goodness sake, do be a bit more positive." Elinor shinned up the tree, stripped a branch clean, filled a small pan with the leaves and plonked it in front of me. "Look, there's plenty in there to make one of your smelly little dye baths."

Which wasn't quite the experiment I'd been thinking of, but wasn't such a bad idea.

Rolled and tied in a bundle of mordanted cloth, whether simmered in a dye bath or steamed, I have found that ginkgo leaves don't release enough dye to make a visible contact print. 
However, when they are laid on fabric that has already been plant dyed, then covered with an iron blanket and rolled up, after steaming the bundle, ginkgo leaves do seem to reduce the colour of the original dye on the fabric underneath. This photo shows how pale a shape they left on Dyers Chamomile dyed, alum mordanted silk. Some of the other leaves have also reduced the yellow background and a few kinds have added their own dye colour, but the net result is that the ginkgo leaf silhouettes are the most strikingly pale.

One of the experiments I did get round to was trying a copper blanket. Rather than soaking a strip of cotton in dilute iron solution, I soaked one in a bowl of water with a splash of fluid from my jar of copper piping which has been soaking in a mix of water and vinegar. No idea how much copper was in that splash, enough to turn the water and the cotton fabric pale blue.

This silk had been dyed pink with silver birch bark, which turns a deeper, purple pink when modified with copper in the dye bath. I  laid my copper blanket over the ginkgo leaves and also some oak leaves, which had been dipped in iron solution, rolled all the fabric up with a layer of clingfilm and tied it firmly.

I hoped that after steaming the bundle for an hour or so, I would achieve a lovely deep pink where the blanket had pressed against the silk and a paler pink where the ginkgo leaves reduced its background colour. In practice, the ginkgo leaves worked as expected, but the copper blanket didn't really modify the birch bark dye half as strongly as copper in a dye bath would have done. I think the dark iron oak leaf prints look too heavy and clumsy on the pastel background and I must have dripped iron solution here and there and made unwanted grey marks. 
Good job, there's always overdyeing, because another experiment with an iron blanket on wool fabric didn't go well either.

I spread the dyed wool with a whole range of leaves and flowers and madder roots before steaming, but the result was a feeble shadow of the effects the same leaves have produced on silk. If you look at the bottom right corner, you'll see a ginkgo print which had a flower pressed underneath it. I have noticed before that these flowers print blue at neutral pH and turn purple after an acid rinse. Since this flower had printed purple, it was my guess that the ginkgo leaf had released a considerable amount of acid during the steaming phase. I've read people calling the process by which some leaves reduce the colour of a plant dyed fabric background as an 'exhaust'. Which does give an idea of the result, but doesn't explain how it happens. I suspect that 'exhaust' leaves are acidic and that they don't remove or destroy dye so much as modify it. Many flower dyes and bark dyes look much paler in acid conditions and strengthen if you add an alkali, like soda ash.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, the ginkgo leaves gave off a distinct tang as they were simmered in the dye pan for an hour. Once it was cool, I sieved out the leaves and poured a little of the fluid into three jam jars. I added white vinegar to the first, left the next just as it was and added some dissolved soda ash to the third. Testing with indicator paper showed that the pH of the original dye bath was naturally acidic, coming up at about pH5. Adding vinegar to increase the acidity made no apparent difference to its faint yellow colour, whereas adding soda ash turned the dye a much more powerful yellowy green.

The original weight of dry leaves had been 150g, I put 30g of alum mordanted wool yarn into the pan (a 5/1 plant/wof ratio), simmered it for an hour and the result was ... slightly beige yarn. So ginkgo does not work like ivy leaves, which give colour to wool despite making a pale and acidic dye bath. Thinking I'd take advantage of the acidic conditions to modify the yarn with copper solution. I added a small splash and warmed the dye bath again. There was still precious little colour on the wool until I added enough soda ash to the cooling bath to bring the pH up to neutral. Here's a picture of the finished skein of alum mordanted, copper modified, pH neutralised, ginkgo dyed wool yarn. On top is a length of wool I took out before modifying with copper. One end was soaked in the soda ash alkali jar, which made it bright yellow, the other end remains off white/beige.

In conclusion, I don't think I'd bother dyeing with ginkgo leaves per se. They needed so much alkali to bring up a strong yellow that the wool fibres felt harsh and damaged, and the copper modified khaki I got at neutral pH is not a colour I'm wildly excited by. Judging by the way it behaves, I'd guess the dye in the leaves has much in common with luteolin, which I can source from weld or a wide range of wild and cultivated flowers. The reason to be cheerful and not to regret having grown a ginkgo tree in my garden is the 'exhaust' effect of the acid released by the leaves during contact dyeing. And of course, the tree itself is a lovely sight. Soon to be minus a couple of branches.

My companion and I stood in the garden, sizing up the job.
"You can't regret planting a tree, Beaut."
"True enough, Elinor, I guess this one will outlive me."
"It could outlive your great, great, great grandchildren and then some. There are ginkgo trees in China said to be over 2,500 years old."

"Wow, that's amazing. Nice to think I really started something when I germinated that ginkgo seed. I'd better be careful not to harm it when I do this pruning."

"I reckon it will survive even your worst efforts, Beaut. Ginkgo trees are 'living fossils', they've been around for more than 270 million years and made it through major extinction events. Gone one better than the dinosaurs."
"Ooo. I shall name this one Betty, after Great Great Aunty Betty. I'm glad to have it here, growing old with me."
"You'll be even more pleased when you start to lose your marbles. Research says an extract from the leaves could help treat Altzheimer's. In the meantime, you could dose himself up on ginkgo tea and see if that lives up to its reputation." Elinor performed a short, but seductively suggestive fan dance with one of the leaves. 
"I think I'll just knit him something."

Bonfire Scarf - printed with Eucalyptus, Oak, Onion and Madder

My companion, Elinor Gotland, hurried to catch me as I returned indoors from taking the washing off the line.
 "Ooo, that's a very seasonal scarf, Beaut." Sliding it out of the laundry basket, she wrapped the wool round her neck. "Mmm, cosy. These prints look just like a bonfire, it's the perfect thing for me to wear to Firework Night."
I followed as she hoofed it upstairs to look at herself in front of the mirror. 
"Do try not to get ketchup all down it."
"Ketchup? Hardly. As the celebrity guest at a stylish gathering, I'm expecting Pulled Pork and Parkin Cake with my hot buttered rum."
"Well, just watch out for the bangers."
She smirked at her reflection.
"Don't panic, Beaut, I'm more of a sparkler girl, myself."

I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with this design. Most of my plant dye contact prints this autumn have been experiments, trying to work out which effects are given by different types of local leaves, before I can move on to any real attempt at artistry. This scarf was printed with more familiar materials and since it did come out the way I'd hoped, I've made quite a few.

If you would like to make one yourself, here's how I did it. The scarf is a lightweight woven wool fabric, mordanted by soaking for two days in a solution of 10% of its weight in alum crystals (aluminium potassium sulphate). After a rinse, it was wrung out gently, as it seems wool needs to be fairly damp to take prints well. I've also found the eucalyptus leaves from the florists give much more colour on wool than on silk or cotton - see this post for more details. To keep iron from seeping through all the layers, this scarf was smoothed out flat on top of a layer of clingfilm.

The cinerea and parvifolia eucalyptus branches had been dried out, so they needed half an hour's soak in a bowl of hot water to regain flexibilty before the big cinerea leaves could be laid along one edge of the fabric. The thin madder roots had been dug up and dried out last spring and were sprinkled on nearer to the midline of the scarf, to print red lines among the small, pointed and I think, flame-shaped parvifolia eucalyptus leaves. Dried onion skins were scattered over the cinerea to add their bronze-gold colour and texture to the bonfire base and a few oak leaves were dipped in very dilute iron solution and laid here and there to make grey, smokey outlines.

All of these plant materials will print from both sides, so only one edge of the scarf needed to be laid with dye materials, before folding the opposite edge of the fabric over to cover them. The scarf and the layer of clingfilm underneath it were rolled around a section of plastic pipe and tied firmly with string. 


The bundle was then stood on a trivet inside a large pot with a little water in the bottom and heated to steaming point for an hour or so. It was left overnight to cool and unrolled the following morning.

With the fold in the scarf pulled open, you can see how the plants have made mirror prints on its opposite side. The strong orange comes from the eucalyptus, yellow from onion skin, red from madder and grey from the iron dipped oak leaves.

Once the plant material has all been peeled off you can see that the two sides of the scarf are not identical, because where the materials overlapped, they have printed best on the side of the material against which they pressed directly. 
While all these dyes can give strong colour on wool, they will last much longer if you keep the scarf to cure for a week before washing it with a pH neutral wool wash liquid. After that, I've found their wash and lightfastness is pretty good, so I wasn't terribly anxious about Elinor getting her scarf grubby at the bonfire party this evening. Turns out, it's the least of her worries.

My companion had come back downstairs with a face like a boot.
"Problem with the outfit? Maybe you'd prefer a silk scarf for your soiree?"
"Hah." She tossed her phone onto the kitchen table. "That was my agent. She's only just seen fit to let me know that I'm not to be so much a guest at the do as a children's entertainer. Would I tell scarey stories round the campfire?" She looked quite fearsome as she added "I can think of a few I'd like to tell her."
I blenched. Whatever were the organisers thinking? Elinor is a fine raconteuse, but I'm not sure her tales are suitable for those of an impressionable age. Of one thing I am sure - there will be fireworks tonight.

More About Dye Prints from Coloured Autumn Leaves

My companion, Elinor Gotland, kicked her way through a large pile of leaves. 
"I think it's time you swept this patio, Beaut."
I squinted up at the sunlight pouring through the bare grape vines.
"Hmm, well, it does look like the leaves have nearly all fallen now." 

As I racked my brain for an excuse not to fetch the broom, autumn leaf prints came to mind.

"Ooo, Elinor, remember those scarves I printed for you last month, when these red vine leaves were fresh? Well, I kept them in a shoe box to cure, hoping four week's delay would help fix the colour, but when I washed them yesterday, the pink mostly turned to green."

"Hah, bet you used washing powder and the alkali modified the leaf dye colour."
"No, really, I used pH neutral wool wash liquid. I think the anthocyanin dyes have to have an acid environment to stay pink or purple, even plain water raises their pH too much."
Elinor studied a scarf.
"Well, the leaf prints that were darkest still have a moody purple in them and the green is quite nice anyway, but it won't match my new outfit. Sort it out, would you, I'm off to London this afternoon."
"Sorry, can't oblige. I did tell you that colour wouldn't last."
"Oh, get a grip, Beaut. Just soak the scarf in vinegar - no, make that lemon juice, I don't want to smell like a chip shop."

Rather to my surprise, the green prints shifted back toward red within seconds of soaking in a bowl of hot water with the juice of one lemon. 
I think the vine that has the black grapes and red autumn leaves is called Vitis vinifera purpurea. I may have masses of leaves to sweep up, but I don't regret not dyeing more scarves with them. The anthocyanin colours are generally too fickle, I can't tell customers always to rinse them in lemon juice. Apart from which, I shall have to wait and see if this purple has any better lightfastness than the berry dyes. Maybe dipping the leaves in iron before steaming will have helped.

All this musing on the instability of anthocyanin dyes set me off on a minor panic. In September, I also printed several scarves with smoke bush leaves (Cotinus). Once the leaves had turned from dark green to deep purple, I found they made blue prints when dipped in dilute iron solution and steamed in a bundle. Since the blue did not shift or disappear when washed in the machine at 30 degrees Centigrade with pH neutral detergent, I took a couple to sell in Crafts by the Sea. The scarves don't get full sun all day, like things in the window, but the shop is bright, as it faces straight out onto the coast and the sunset views can be spectacular. Over the years, I've found my display area has provided a fair test of lightfastness, because sales in the shop are rarely brisk. Sod's Law, a couple of the smoke bush printed scarves had already been sold, so it was with some anxiety that I took the remaining one back down from its hanger to compare it with another I'd brought from home, which had been sitting inside a shoe box.

I am pleased and relieved and maybe a bit surprised to report that although blue plant dyes (apart from indigo) are notorious for fading to grey, six weeks in a well lit room had not diminished the blue from smoke bush prints. Individual leaf prints do vary in depth of colour, but overall, there's nothing to choose between the two scarves. The one on the left has been on display, the one on the right has been in the shoe box. Looking critically at the deep blue flower prints, I do think they have faded slightly. You may not believe this, but those flower prints come from a species of coreopsis. I picked up a couple of little plants in a garden centre some time last summer, and I wish I'd kept a note of the name.

I've never had enough flowers all at once to make a dye bath, but since the plants have carried on flowering through the autumn, I've been adding a few now and then to my steamed leaf print bundles. Unlike all the other types of coreopsis I've grown, which print orange to bronze colours, this kind gives an orange centre surrounded by blue petals. It's quite a small plant, only 20cm tall at best. I must save some seeds, though probably they will have been cross pollinated with the other kinds of coreopsis in the garden. I was thinking, that'll be a bit of excitement, seeing what grows next year, only I didn't get much peace to savour the anticipation.

"Hurry up and iron that scarf, Beaut. I need to be off in five minutes or I'll miss my train." My companion tapped her hoof and strode up and down the kitchen while I set up the ironing board. "Don't stand there gawping, get on with it."
"Just look at this, Elinor!"
I was astonished once again. 

Not only had the vine leaf prints gone back to pink and purple, the acid from the lemons had turned the blue coreopsis petal prints purple too.
"Yes, yes, fair play, well done." Disdaining even to look at the green one, my companion grabbed the acid rinsed scarf and disappeared out the front door in a pink swirl of lemon scented silk satin.

Plant Dyeing with Autumn Leaf Printed Colours

Having a plant contact dye plant bundle ready to unroll adds a fine frisson of expectation to my morning cup of tea. I've been experimenting with a technique new to me and trying out the effects of various leaves when laid on plant dyed fabric and steamed with an iron blanket - here's the method I've been using.

This silk was mordanted with alum and dyed with Yellow Cosmos flowers. The warm orange colour the flowers gave the fabric is modified to a duller, darker shade where the iron blanket was pressed against it. Some leaves, like this sycamore, have diminished the colour of the silk, while protecting it from the iron blanket, leaving only a dark halo of iron around their edges.

Other types of leaves simply act as a resist, keeping the colour from the Yellow Cosmos unchanged beneath them, and a few leave their own dye colours. So far, none I've used have printed more powerfully than this purple from a red grape vine leaf, which has even printed its dye onto the cotton of the iron blanket. 

The grape vine leaves are green in early summer, darkening to red in August and already falling this September, though we have yet to have any properly cold nights. Sweeping them up after a week of high winds, I thought I'd try picking some of the remainder and simmering a big handful in an old saucepan for an hour. The water turned deep red and testing with indicator paper showed the dye was strongly acidic.

Taking out three samples from the pot, adding vinegar to one made it slightly more red, while adding soda ash to another instantly shifted the colour to a green brown.

These effects seemed much like those I've seen with berry dyes, which I have found wash out and fade rapidly when exposed to light.

I sieved out the grape leaves from the pot and added a short length of alum mordanted wool tops blended with some silk. After gentle heating and an overnight soak, the wool had turned a beige shade while the silk fibres had gone pink, which I've seen once before, when dyeing with deep pink hollyhock flowers. 


On that occasion, a hot steam iron instantly reduced the colour.

I thought I'd have another look at the first vine leaf printed silk, only to find my companion had been wearing it to go swanning around Cardiff.
"Make the most of that purple leaf print while it's still there, Elinor. When I wash and iron the silk, I don't think the dye will last."
"Just give it a little rinse. You've nothing much to do today, hand wash it for me and it'll be fine."
I put the scarf through the delicates cycle in the washing machine at 30 degrees centigrade with a pH neutral detergent. To my surprise, the colour only dimmed a bit and survived a steam iron. My companion scooped it back up and slung it round her neck. She twirled for me to admire her outfit.
"Off to Cardiff again, are you?"
"We can't all be playing in the garden all day. Some of us have to work, Beaut." 
"Ooo. Have you got a part in another film, or is it TV this time?"
Elinor posed as if to leap into the shrubbery with two guns blazing.
"Starring in a video game, Beaut. Today I shall be shooting aliens in the face."
"In a silk scarf?"
"In Virtual Reality, anything is possible. The computer nerds think purple leaf prints are hip, so #@me next time."
I stared at her.
"You want me to dye another scarf for you?"
"Activate Beast Mode, Beaut. Those leaves will soon be gone."
Which I took to mean yes.

I reckon the purple colour in these leaves must be an anthocyanin. Reading around on the internet, it seems that anthocyanins cause the dramatic colour change seen in some autumn leaves. Fugitive dyes, such as those from berries and red cabbage and hollyhocks are also made by anthocyanins. While it was too soon to say much, the first grape leaf print had at least performed better than berry dyes in the wash. I think this is unlikely to be because of tannins in the leaves, because blackberries have a high tannin content too. Maybe the iron blanket helped, or maybe grape vine leaves contain a different type of anthocyanin.

Anyway, I have printed two more silk scarves, alum mordanted but with no base layer of plant dye. One was was laid out with leaves dipped in a dilute iron solution (right) the other was rolled with an iron blanket (left). Both had a few of the last coreopsis flowers scattered among the leaves.

I think the reason most of these prints are paler than last week is because now, most of the leaves are withering and curling up on the vine. Very pretty, though. I'll just have to wait and see how well the anthocyanin pinks and purples stand up to washing and wearing. Not to mention shooting aliens in Beast Mode.

Dyeing with Iron Dipped Leaves Steamed in a Bundle

Last week, I wrote about using half the leg of a pair of linen trousers in a trial run at printing leaves in a bundle with an iron blanket. This week, you will learn the fate of the other half a leg. The linen had been mordanted with aluminium acetate and was soaked, squeezed out and smoothed over a layer of baking parchment ready for its test. I have used leaves dipped in iron in plenty of dye bundles before now. The thing I wanted to look at was the effect of steaming the bundle, rather than using my usual process of simmering bundles in a plant dye bath. All the leaves were dipped in a weak solution of iron before being laid out.

Untied after being steamed for two hours and left to cool, it was pleasing to see dark iron prints from the underside of the oak leaves and no surprise to find the oak leaves laid face down had left little trace. Interesting to see that halo around the outside of the sycamore leaves, though. That doesn't happen with iron dipped leaves.

The whole piece looked quite exciting while wet, but on reflection, I realised much had been added to this appearance by both iron and yellow chamomile dye, seeping up through the greaseproof paper from the iron blanket trial piece, which had been rolled underneath it and steamed in the same bundle. Once I had realised the limitations of a greaseproof paper barrier, I had much more success using cling film with iron blanket bundles. It seemed well worth using a cling film barrier to have another look a steaming leaves dipped in iron.

I laid out leaves on a silk satin scarf, mordanted with alum. The linen results had at least suggested that lycestra, purple smoke bush and maple leaves could print their own dye as well as an iron outline. I dotted on a few Dyers Chamomile and coreopsis flowers to add a bit more colour, just in case. The scarf was rolled up together with its layer of clingfilm, tied with string and steamed for a couple of hours.

The leaf colours did show up much better this time. Quite a thrill, especially that purple/blue from the smokebush leaves, but the edges of many of the prints were blurred, as if stretched downwards. After washing and ironing, it was clearer that the stretching effect was worse in some parts of the scarf than others. I reckoned the fabric must have been too wet, allowing the plants' dyes to run. Which is an odd thought for someone who usually completely immerses dye plant contact prints in a dye bath. Steaming is a whole new ball game for me, worth pursuing because I do like the cleaner look and clearer background, though using clingfilm irks my conscience.

My next attempt was on two more alum mordanted silk scarves, this time wringing them out firmly after soaking to reduce the amount of water sealed under the clingfilm during steaming. It worked, there was little or no bleeding of dye around the edge of each leaf or flower. Oddly enough, though clingfilm prevented iron from seeping through the layers, a little of the intense dye from the coreopsis had got through, making paler dots on the silk rolled in the layer above and below each flower. Dye molecules must be smaller than iron and clingfilm must be a semipermeable membrane. I am going to find some reusable plastic sheets for future tests, maybe thicker plastic will confine the plant dyes more completely.

My companion, Elinor Gotland, realised I was ironing silk and trotted over.
"Fair play, Beaut, those scarves are classy. Not like your usual jumble of colours at all."
"Mmm. Haven't I been restrained, just using one kind of leaf and one kind of flower?" 
She just looked me up and down and sighed.
"To be honest, there's not much point me explaining the aesthetics of elegance to a woman wearing her husband's old clothes."
"It's my Bohemian look. Arts and crafts vibe."
"Hoobydouche. If you were an artist, you'd understand about negative space." 

Elinor shook out the first scarf with those bleeding edges on the prints. I waited for some sharp rebuke for wasting good silk, but she scooped it up in delight. 
"OMG, I'm having this one. It's practically Salvador Dali."