One of my favorite activities during cherry season is to make clafouti: a slightly sweet popover in a pan. Since cherries are bountiful currently, I bought about a pound, or two or three cups. The cherry juice, as usual, started staining my gloved hands while I pitted them. It was a lovely color. The pits and stems piled up, waiting for the compost, but it seemed a good opportunity for a dyeing experiment.
I cut a strip of silk, dampened it with white vinegar, rolled them up, and left the bundle to integrate while I cooked.
The clafouti takes about forty minutes to bake, about the limit of my impatience. I unrolled the cherry scroll.
Rinsed it, and ironed it dry.
The scroll probably would have been darker if I had left it, at least overnight. But it looks like a good base for some little patches or stitching or part of a bojagi-style curtain like this one. Or perhaps some book cloth!
The clafouti recipe is in Still Life with Menu Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. The ingredients are simple: flour, milk, eggs, vanilla, a little butter and salt, and fruit.
My cherry quilt at this post.
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