If you've followed our blog for any length of time, you know that Elizabeth and Sue usually get together in New Hampshire in the summer for "quilt camp". This is not an actual "camp", just us having play time at Elizabeth's summer house on Lake Winnipesaukee. Unfortunately circumstances haven't allowed for us to have quilt camp this summer, but since Elizabeth is back in VA for a few weeks for a medical procedure, we managed to get together for a play day. Both of us have been experimenting with cyanotype printing (also known as blueprints) - this is a form of sun printing in which specially treated fabric turns blue when exposed to the sun. Natural objects are most often used as resists to block the UV rays and create the print. If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram, you'll see lots of pictures like this one.
Another product that is supposed to work similarly to cyanotype is called Solar Fast by Jacquard. There are various colors that are painted onto the fabric, and as with cyanotype, something that blocks the UV rays creates the print. Sue had some leftover product and decided to see if it would still work. In addition to natural objects, you can use transparencies of images to create prints, so she decided to try transparencies of some of our screen printing images.
Above are the
Jacquard Solar Fast film product and the printed images Sue used.
This is the "before" photo - the 2 pieces that look yellow are painted with teal colored solar fast, and the pinkish one is painted with violet. The black images are the transparencies.
This is what they looked like after exposure to the sun. They were outside for about 45 minutes; the recommended time was 10-20 minutes. However the results were less than inspiring.
Not sure if the product was too old, exposure wasn't long enough, sun not bright enough? Lots of variables. Perhaps buying fresh product would help answer the question. At any rate, we did try transparencies with cyanotype fabric and that did work so the transparency was not the problem.
Sue wanted to do some low water immersion dyeing so set up these 6 jars with the primary and secondary colors. More to come on those results.
Back to cyanotype printing. These are the same transparencies from the solar fast on cyanotype pre-treated fabric. The top is
Jacquard fabric and the bottom is from
Blueprints. This photo was taken after exposure, before rinsing. The image is a little hard to see, especially the bottom so you might have to enlarge. After rinsing, the results are quite different.
This is one of our crackle screen images, and was done with a dry process. (We have been experimenting with wet cyanotype too.) Much better results than the solar fast.
Surprise, this piece turned out to be green! It was hard to tell what color it was before exposure.
This treble clef was a card stock cut out that did a good job of blocking the UV rays.
Between the fabric and ginkgo leaves was a small piece of cheesecloth. Since the threads are so fine, it didn't make a real noticeable print except where the edges were a little thicker. Oh well, it's a matter of figuring out what works and what doesn't.
Finally, an attempt at sun printing with paint, trying Artistic Artifacts paints to see if they would work. The results were not as good as we hoped, but worth another try. The fabric should have been wet before applying the paint, so perhaps that would have made a difference.
The print is kind of vague, so we decided enhancing the edges would "fix" it.
A gold sharpie was used to outline the edges.
Stay tuned for more on the dyed fabrics.
