Making Nettle Paper

My homemade nettle paper

 

Recently I've been making nettle paper with my daughter and the help of Helen Cook's pamphlet - Making Paper from Stinging Nettles.  To be honest, I got to do the fun bit.  My daughter had already picked the nettles, striped them, soaked and retted them.

Helen Cook - Making Paper from Stinging Nettles

We took the retted nettle fibre...

Retted Nettle Fibre

and with some tweakments added it to a washing up bowl of water...

Our equipment - nettle fibre, washing up bowl and water, scissors, mould and deckle

and then scooped up the nettle fibre with the mould and deckle...

Mould and deckle with nettle fibre

The soon to be paper was then tipped out onto a tea towel and sandwiched between some felt.  Then you have to apply something heavy to squeeze the water out...

Something heavy must be applied to squeeze the water out

Then the paper is left to dry... 

You have to peel off the dried paper from whatever it's drying on...

And there you have it - paper from stinging nettles.  I think we need to refine our mould and deckle technique to get a more consistent thickness of paper that covers the whole mould without any holes in the sheet of paper...  

Nettle paper of varying thicknesses

I plan to do some stitching in my nettle paper.  Watch this space...