QC6 Day 3

July 2, 2014
Today was a better day, at least I got started on some things.  It's hard to believe its day 3 already - I feel like I've been in a fog.  I took 2 hour naps at 5:00 for the last 2 days.  But today I made it through the whole day awake!  This morning I spent some time figuring out what to start on.  I intended to start with gelli plate printing a background layer, but then side tracked to 2 other things and never got back to the gelli plate, so that will be on tomorrow's agenda.  First I prepared a piece for sun printing.

 

I started with a fat quarter that was pale yellow from a previous dye bath and placed it on a foam core board covered with plastic.  You can see from the pink on the sides that it has been used before.  The first step is to saturate the fabric with water, then apply paint.  I used Pebeo Setacolor that was diluted about half & half with water and brushed it on with a foam brush; I used, green, yellow and blue and blended them together.

 It picked up a few spots of paint from the plastic, but that's OK.

Then I placed my printing objects on top.  I had some new stencils I wanted to try, but they didn't take up enough space so I added some natural elements - ferns and wild flowers.

After everything was in position I covered it with a piece of organza and tacked it down. That keeps things from blowing away or shifting position if there's a breeze while it sits in the sun.  It needs to sit in a sunny spot until its dry.

When it's dry, you can remove the organza and printing elements.  It needs to be heat set (with an iron) before washing.  You can always add another layer of sun printing or other surface design technique.  Here's the finished piece, although this photo came out lighter than it really is; the color above is more accurate.

The second thing I worked on today was trying a new product called color magnet.  Its a dye attractant, so when you dye something, more dye is attracted to the parts that have the color magnet applied.  I screen printed some flowers on a shirt, and left it to dry overnight.  Tomorrow I will apply the dye. (You can see the sun print in the background - that is the true color.)

And one more thing I did today was make and tape more screens!

The fern and pine cone were gathered on my morning walk, and tomorrow I will be able to print them!