SUNPRINTING EXPERIMENT

We have had all possible extremes of weather in various places in Australia lately. Usually, February in Sydney is hot, and it seemed a good time for our Fibrecircle group to plan some sunprinting. Well - it rained on the day we tried. But I had a solo attempt the other day, as I was determined. This is meant to be a mix of things, no particular design.

1. I rinsed the fabric, as it was new

2. still wet, I pegged it out over a plastic picnic basket lid. I was hoping that getting air underneath would help the paint dry

3. the fabric was still wet - then I sloshed on a mix, roughly 1 : 1 Setacolour opaque fabric paint and water - the green/ yellow base colour. 4. I'm lazy when it comes to mixing lots of little pots of colour. I used a couple of sponge brushes, about 1" wide, very wet, and tipped a tiny bit of the contrast colours onto the brushes, then dabbed them in various places on the fabric. The darker green, some gold, and oriental red were put on this way.

5. small seed pods, leaves, salt crystals, a piece of plastic mesh and a flannel flower were added.

The piece dried fairly quickly - sorry I can't be more exact - I went inside to have lunch!!

The flannel flower stuck in the wet paint, and gave the clearest image - the other shapes are very indistinct.

Of course, Setacolour makes a Soleil paint, specifically for this technique - it would be interesting to see if it gives clearer results, or is it just affected by how closely the shapes are to the fabric?

More experiments are sure to follow.

Oh - and my idea about using the picnic basket lid?? Well, it did help with the drying process, but the grid of the basket has transferred to the back of the fabric. There must be some effect from heat, as well as direct sun? or was there more shadow than I noticed? hmmm