Flower pounding, or in Japanese, Hapazome, is the art of transferring flower and leaf color and patterns onto cloth and paper.

Foraged leaves and flowers from my near by Brooklyn park.

With just a few tools and responsible foraging, you can make beautiful flower images on textiles and paper to make everything from floral home accessories to hand made greeting cards.

Foraged leaves, cutting board, rubber mallet, and paper and cloth.

What you’ll need:

Responsibly foraged flowers and leaves

Rubber mallet - a hammer works well too, just be careful not to pound too hard

Watercolor paper or natural fiber textiles such as a cotton hand towel or hankie

Masking tape

Paper towels

Old wooden cutting board or piece of wood

This technique is best used for items that won’t be laundered often. As the flower colors are delicate and may fade quickly with many washings. Creating decorative textiles or prints on paper will give the longest lasting results.

With all natural dyes, once the color begins to fade, it can always be redyed. So please don’t let this discourage you from dyeing clothing. If you want to print on a clothing item, you may consider mordanting your textiles before printing. I have touched on safe mordanting techniques in a few of the other tutorials HERE. You can also print on textiles that have been dyed with a high tannin plant such as acorns or avocado that will act as a mordant for the flower printing.

Collect flowers and leaves. Make sure you take just a little and leave the rest for nature. Lay your fabric or paper on the cutting board or wood. Place the flowers with the stem side facing up and trim the stem as close as possible to the flower. Leaves can be places with the vein side down or up. Certain leaves will print better on one side than the other. You’ll have to experiment to see what works best. If you are printing on a shirt, place a piece of parchment paper between the front on back. If not, the flowers and leaves may print through to the other side.

A different flower arrangement on cloth.

Once the flowers and leaves are arranged on the fabric or paper, cover with a paper towel and carefully tape the paper towel in place as to secure the plants in place. Alternately, if you have a piece of fabric that is long enough, you can fold one half of the fabric over the plants, making a little fabric, plant sandwich.

A paper towel placed over the arranged flowers and taped down.

Now, very carefully, pound, with gently pressure with the rubber mallet, on the leaves and flowers. Pound until some of the plant color comes though the paper towel. (If the fabric is folded over you may not see as much plant color come through.)

Pounding the flowers with the rubber mallet.

Pounded flowers with paper towel removed.

Once you have extracted the plant color, gently remove the tape and paper towel. If the flower or leaves have stuck to the fabric or paper, carefully remove them.

If you have printed on paper, the process is finished.

If you have printed on fabric, leave your fabric to cure for a few days, then iron to set the color. As always, when caring for naturally dyed textiles, hand wash in cold water with a neutral pH soap and hang dry.

If you have enjoyed this tutorial, please check out our other tutorials HERE and leave a comment below. Sign up for our not so often newsletter for workshops and Rabbit news.

Flower Printing

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