Iris Leaf Paper

July 16-18, 2010

     On July 16th, a friend and coworker brought me some iris leaves and bulbs from her place in Hallsville, Missouri. I started processing the fiber immediately as excitement took hold.  In school, I'd seen a group make paper out of iris and it's surface texture was varied.  I wasn't sure what to expect out of these leaves.  They were very fresh and as a result had a high-volume compared to their weight so in the end, there wasn't a lot of pulp to work with. Even so, the results were beautiful.


See the recipe after the jump.

Materials:
 ½ lb fiber

iris leaves, collected in Hallsville, MO on July 15^th

Process:

Prep:
cut leaves into 2” or smaller pieces 
soaked dry fiber in 2 gal water for 45 minutes

Cook:
brought 1 gal water plus fiber to a boil
added 1 ½ tbsp soda ash to pot
reduced heat to med-low (setting 4) 
cooked fiber for 2 hrs
let fiber set in pot overnight to cool 
rinsed fiber until water ran clear

Pulping:
beat bark in a standard-size blender (5.5 cup capacity)
1 batch of fiber beat as follows 
all fiber, 4 ½ cups water for 3 min on 7 (Liquify)



Paper-making: 
pulled 8 sheets 10” x 10” of varying thicknesses (only 6 made good, solid sheets

pulled sheets were pressed under 60 lbs of weight for 4 days
 after pressing, sheets were ironed dry

Expectations:

Fibrous paper with lots of surface variation (from a previous encounter with iris leaf paper).

Observations:

Paper is thin, but stiff. Using fresh iris leaves results in a high-volume per weight fiber, and this might affect the final color as this paper was very light yellow.

Conclusions:

Paper would be very suitable for writing by using the correct sizing during processing.

References:

Experience

 Sheet too thin to be paper. Iris leaf pulp was used up rather quickly.