Hapa Zome is the ancient Japanese art of beating natural dyes into cloth.
This morning the children at Holly Bank went exploring and collected lots of different shaped and coloured leaves and a few buttercups. We had small squares of calico and the children arranged their leaves and flowers in a pattern then placed the cloth on top. They then pounded the squares with mallets. The harder they hit the leaves the more dye came out. The children quickly discovered that this doesn’t work with brown dead leaves the ones that are full of moisture gave the best results. They then placed one square underneath and one on top and it gave a mirror image. The children are going to use their works of art to make some bunting!
