Sunday, April 17, 2011

Process: Part 2 (Collecting Plants and Fruits)





A problem that I encountered before starting this project was the difficulty of finding native plants. Ideally, I would have liked to have obtained a variety of plants that produce a range of dye colors. However, I realized that this was much harder than I expected because I don't know where these plants grow and it's not possible to take them out of their natural habitats. Therefore, instead, I called many florists in Honolulu that had the plants on my list. Most of the florists did not have the plants that I was looking for, however Le Flowers had red ginger plants that I was able to buy for a cheap price. I ended up buying only one plant because the flower bunch contained red and dark orange ginger as well as the leaves. I thought that I could use these different parts of the plant to yield different colors.
Other fruit that I used was blackberries. They were extremely dark, so I only used two while I boiled the first plants and cloth.
The other plants/substances that I used were just things that I had at home or that I got from my grandma's garden. Since I could not obtain the same plants that the Hawaiians used (due to scarcity and because they are not available,) I reverted to more common species.

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