Sunprinting on fabric

I finally made time to do some sun printing last weekend. I wanted to do some large pieces of fabric, which was a challenge. I also wanted to do multiple layers of paint to get some depth to the patterns.

Here is my setup. I lay my fabric out on an insulation board (from the hardware store). My board is about 4' long x 3' wide. My fabric is 6' long x 3-1/2' wide. For the first layer I did half the fabric and after it was painted and dried, I did the other half.

I find it easier to lay dry fabric on the board and wet it with a spray bottle, than to dampen the fabric first. I need to try to get the fabric as smooth as possible and it is much easier doing it section by section with a spray bottle. The fabric was pre-washed and dried in the dryer.  I am using 100% cotton sheet.

Here are my Setacolor paints. I keep them in these plastic containers with screw-top lids. I water them down about 50/50 (half paint/half water), screw the lid on and shake it. Make sure the lid is on tight.

Here is a collection of lace, doilies, stencils, etc to sun print with.

For this piece I layered two pieces of fabric. The bottom layer usually is more muted than the top, after they have been painted and dried. I often do this as it's like getting two pieces for the work of one.

For this first layer, I used two yellows and an orange. I used lace and lace doilies to sun print. They were very soft sun prints, due to the light paint colors.

This is after doing both sections of fabric, size is roughly 6' x 3-1/2'.

Here is a close-up of a doily print.

For the second layer, I painted on red, more orange, and fuchsia. I used stencils and plastic doilies with this layer.

I wanted to soften up the color transitions, so for the third layer, I did what I call Puddle Painting. I pour multiple paint colors onto a plastic lid (from a storage container) and smush my wrinkled up damp fabric into the paint. I will squeeze the fabric a little, unwrinkle it, then ball it up again and smush it into the paint again. I usually only have to do this twice to get good coverage on most of the fabric. I don't want to completely cover up the previous layer. I recommend wearing gloves. I puddle painted the entire fabric and had it span two different boards (since the fabric is longer than the boards). You can see my blog post demonstrating puddle painting here.

Here is the final piece, ironed. I think it's hard to tell how big the fabric is in these pictures. The round stencils are about 12" to give you a sense of scale.

Close up of the final piece.

As I said above, I put a second piece of fabric underneath when I painted the first layer. The colors were a muted yellow and orange on this bottom piece. I just added one more layer of paint to it, to create a more multi-colored piece. I used the puddle painting technique and used primary colors, cobalt blue, red, and yellow. I also included some fuchsia and some opaque turquoise. Setacolor opaque colors will not sun print, but I like this turquoise color and it adds some pop.

Here is the final piece and I think it is delicious.

Here are some close-ups.

I also like the back side, the colors and patterns are more subtle.

Back, close-up.

I think I will be combining some of the front and some of the back in my project.



But I'm not done sun printing.

I did a similar orange and yellow first layer on a smaller piece of fabric. This piece is about 2' x 3'. I layered a lot of smaller stencils on this piece.

I also did a narrow band of fabric that I put lace on top of.

Both these have a top and bottom layer of fabric.

Here is the top layer, after sun printing. I left this piece as is and did not print over it.

Here is the bottom layer.

The bottom layer I printed over using ultramarine blue and more stencils. I do not like the orange and dark blue contrast.  I am not sure what I will do with this piece. Maybe another layer?The area to the right where it was folded up it actually quite interesting.

For the narrow band, I cut it in half and overprinted one of them with red and fuchsia, with stencils.

Close-up. The dark yellow section does have the lace pattern printed on it, it is just hard to see in these pictures. As you can see, the section I over-painted with red and fuschia is quite different depending on the color of the underlayer. The part that looks orange was the darker yellow color like the piece above it.

Here is the lace and doilies I sun printed with. I did paint them some more after printing.

I also painted some cheesecloth, a Japanese inspired 60's fabric, and polyester dress lining. There is a certain kind of polyester that prints the wrinkles in the fabric really well.

More cheesecloth and the Japanese inspired 60's fabric.

I started the large fabric pieces, which were cotton sheets, with the sewn edges still on. They were preventing the fabric from being really flat on the boards, so I cut them off after applying the paint. I will be keeping them to incorporate in my project.

But wait, there's more. When I have my sun printing supplies out, I start looking for things to paint. I made some large fabric collage pieces previously, and decided to sun print a few. These were puddle painted. This is a big one, roughly 3' x3'.  I used a few stencils on it as well (circles and plastic doilies).

Before:

 After:

This one is 12" x 12". I dripped a little opaque turquoise on afterwards. Puddle painted with no sun printing.

This one is 12" x12". I think I may work on leaving more white on future pieces. Puddle painted with no sun printing.

And I just thought I'd add a few pictures of flowers from my yard. The back yard is more weeds than grass, but I do have these lovelies.

Northern Hibiscus

Surprise lily

Leaves, fabric collage

I while ago I had made this fabric collage with different fabrics, sun printed it with Setacolor paints, and then free-motion stitched the leaves onto it.  You can see that post here.

I wanted to create a companion piece with more color. I sun printed leaves on two layers of fabric, a polyester sheer (shown here),

and a heavy cotton canvas (below). As you can see, the paint did not completely cover the canvas. I went in afterwards and covered any white canvas areas with paint. 

When I was testing the sheer over the canvas, the canvas seemed too bright for the background, so I applied a coat of transparent Cerulean blue over the entire canvas. The yellow areas became green, and the magenta areas are a dark blue-purple. I then free motion stitched around the leaf patterns that were printed on the polyester sheer, and cut around the leaves to expose the canvas. I wrapped the fabric around a 15" x 30" canvas and stapled it on the back side.

Detail.

I love to combine color, pattern, and fabric.

Puddle painting fabric

I finally realized it was summer and I should do some fabric painting outdoors. I have a fabric collage project in mind and wanted a bunch of different kinds of fabrics painted in similar colors.

I really like painting with my Setacolor transparent paints since I can dry/heat set them in the sun (instead of all the rinsing and washing that goes with dyeing fabric).  To get a mottled effect in my paint colors, I like to do what I call "puddle painting". I use a plastic lid that has a recessed section, pour my paints on it, then sop up the paint with damp fabric. You can see my original post with step by step photos here. In my original post, I just laid the fabric on plastic tablecloths or plastic drop cloths. These paints are light sensitive, so if the fabric is slightly wrinkled or rippled, these will "sun print" onto the fabric. This time I stretched and pinned my fabrics on my large foam insulation boards to avoid this.

Here are my fabrics. (The "teal" color is not from the Setacolor transparent line, so will not sun print, but works fine for puddle painting).

I really wanted some dark fabrics for contrast.

This piece was previously ice dyed, but had way too much pink. The paint covered some of the pink but not the whole ice design. (The chevrons are embroidered on, originally ivory fabric with blue variegated chevrons).

Two more mediocre ice dyed pieces that were then painted.  I wish I had taken pictures of the ice dyed fabrics that I made last week, but they were so "blah" that I didn't make the effort. Now that they look good, I wish I had "before" pictures.

I tried to avoid having bubbles, but the seams on this fabric made it impossible. You can see how the wrinkles and bubbles have sun printed onto the fabric. Not a fan of the wrinkles, but love the eyelet edging!

This one is not dry yet, but I was trying for a "sunset" look and am happy how it came out.

This piece is not dry yet, it is interfacing (I think it is fusible).

And I just keep finding fabric to paint, so here's some more.

This is a polyester sheer. I decided to include wrinkles so they would sun print.

 I love the look of this. I have done this with polyester sheers before, but this fabric is fantastic.

So I did it again, with a shiny polyester and it looks good too.

And then let's try the first polyester again, but this time with different colors.

 Detail

And this is the same technique on (previously ice-dyed) cotton, not nearly as interesting.

Next in the fabric stash are some lace pieces.

And then let's do some sun printing with stencils.

Shiny ombre polyester, painted with blues and purples and sun printed with stencils.

Sheer royal blue polyester painted with purple, blue, and black and sun printed with stencils.

Even the rag I used to clean my puddle palette between colors turned out interesting.

Not a bad stash for a day's work, now I need to find time to work on the fabric collage.