After Quilt Camp - Keeping the Momentum Going

Once Sue leaves quilt camp, it really does get quiet and lonely.  Sometimes it is hard to keep momentum going and keep creating.  But this year, Elizabeth has 6 more weeks to work in the garage studio. So, she decided to try some of the wet cyanotype printing like Sue did last week.  This was the new technique we tried this year after seeing lots of Facebook posts by Sue Reno and Lesley Riley.  Cyanotype, or "blueprint" printing, is similar to sun printing in that the fabric is treated with certain chemicals, resist items are placed on top, and then placed in the sun for the print to develop.  In normal dry cyanotype printing, the fabric turns a deep blue color.  Both Sue and Lesley have been experimenting with wet cyanotype, which (we think) produces more interesting results and varied colors.  So we wanted to give it a try.

We are lucky that a few years ago we found a very large picture frame at the swap shop located at the dump.  We wanted the frame to hang it from the tree branch down by the lake and use for a photo shoot area when Elizabeth's son was married.  Thus she had removed the large piece of glass and the picture.  The glass is now being used to firmly hold down our plant material on top of the fabric pretreated for the exposure to the sun during the cyanotype process.

Her first try was using oak leaves.  She specifically looked for a few leaves that had holes in them so that the sun would shine on the holes and develop them like the background color. She sprayed the edges of the fabric with a solution of soda ash and water (just the same as we use when dyeing our fabrics and t-shirts).  Then placed the glass down on the leaves and left them in the sun.  Most of the change took place within half an hour but she left the "leaf sandwich" outside for two days; one night it even rained on it.  It was rinsed in cold water and then let to sit in a bath of hydrogen peroxide and water for about 20 minutes before rinsing again in cold water, then left on the clothesline to dry.

Above, after rinsing.  Below, when dry.

Her second try was leaves from wild strawberry plants that grow along the foundation of the house near the water faucet.  She picked these leaves because of the serrated edges, thinking they would be different from the deciduous tree leaves and ferns which are also available around the yard.  In the spirit of experimentation, she used more water on the glass which touched the leaves and immediately ran down some ripples in the black garbage bag which covers the foam core board on which the fabric lays.

You can clearly see the ripples in the final print.  Elizabeth had read an article by Lesley Riley suggesting a rinse in vinegar solution after a warm water rinse and as she had a very very old bottle of red wine vinegar (so old it had sludge on the bottom of the bottle), she used that in a 4:1 vinegar to water soak.  She misread the article which said 1:4.  Oh well, it was an experiment.  Immediately the water and the design turned a lovely teal blue.

After letting it soak for about 10 minutes she rinsed it out and this was how it looked.

After hanging on the line to dry it had lightened up in the areas of the leaves and now looks like this:

We are intrigued by this technique and will continue to experiment, and try to keep the momentum of quilt camp going!