Tuesday, June 4, 2013

ONE LAST SUN PRINTING POST

My friend Kay (and excellent dyer) over at Quilts + Color sent me her take on why our sun printing might not have worked.  I know my fabric was sopping wet so I don't think it applied to me, however it's as good a reason as any we thought of!!!

My possible take on your disappointment with the sun printing…….
I am thinking because the temperatures were warm the whole area may have gotten warm enough to dry the paint almost equally and so there was no color migrating out from under the things you put on it.

I have found the sun is NOT necessary to get the effect……my granddaughter and I did it in my studio late one evening and in the morning we had the clearest prints ever.

It’s just the fact that the color can’t dry under the objects so it migrates out.

Someone recently did an experiment and found it worked with a lot of types of paint and found out craft paints work equally as well, although they DO change the hand of the fabric.not a problem if you are making wall quilts, etc.


 To wind up this subject....here are the only two cotton pieces I sun printed.  This one shows the front.....with slight impressions of the sticks I had placed on top. 
 Here's the back side which had been drying on black top.....much more interesting!!!
 The front of another cotton piece....the only thing that printed at all was a metal wheel sort of thing in the upper left....the other metal objects didn't print at all.
But, I'm lovin' the back of this piece...which had dried on cardboard!  

So, I conclude this venture with fond memories of a day hanging with the Fiber Junkies.....we are in deep discussions about what the subject of our June experiment day will be.  I'm now going to focus the rest of my week to other more productive projects....grinning......

2 comments:

Maggie said...

If it is heat and not the sunlight, you might have also been done in by that beautiful blacktop, which was essentially cooking the stuff from below and thus ignoring your objects.

The Idaho Beauty said...

Thanks for sharing Kay's take on the process. It is what I'd surmised from my own experiments but seemed to be counter to what everyone else was saying about sun printing. I agree - the backs of your felt pieces are VERY interesting.