September 5, 2011
As evidenced by prior posts, I’ve been playing with sun printing on cotton fabric. Yesterday I made four new one-yard pieces, with one “failure”. I learned a lesson: The color of the paint must be significantly darker than the fabric it is on. Using a paler hue will not allow the shapes to sun print to show up. I got only a few very subtle effects. This series of photos shows the process and result.
Original hand-dyed fabric
Painting with lavender
End result
This last photo is a close up, attempting to show the very slight impression left by a leaf near the center of this fabric. Basically, all I accomplished was to lighten the over-all color of the piece.
In the future, I’ll take care to use darker paint, and perhaps a lighter base fabric. This might have worked well with black paint. Anyone know if I can paint it again successfully?
I learned that lesson last summer. I’ve done better this year and now must figure out what to do with my work. It’s really fun, though, isn’t it? Keep playing and trying.
Lynn
I have always tried to remember what I was told a long time ago when beginning fabric painting….. There are no “failures” with fabric, just different fabric…. I’ve found that some of my sunprinting failures have been just the fabric bit a project needed. And if you really dislike the result, you can always overpaint
It has been a long time since I played with re-sunprinting a piece…. I was trying for extra depth to the designs… Can’t remember how things worked out…. Certainly can’t hurt to try! 