Sun Printing

I did some sun printing during the three days of sun we had this summer. Absolutely loved it and will be repeating it the minute it's sunny and hot again.

Here are some useful resources:

• a video showing sun dyeing in speeded up version.
• a video explaining sun dyeing in more detail and shows some interesting techniques including swirl and scrunch effects.
• sun dyeing with acrylics instead of special paints.

And these ones explain the science behind it:

• http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/howtodyewithlight.shtml
• http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/dyeblog/C557981556/E20130702081959/index.html

I used Colourcraft Silk Paint.

My results were very pleasing

Various trials on the go

This one came out well and I love the blue

This one didn't come out so well in the end, not enough definition

Curling soft leaves

The stripes from the John Lewis bag showed through to the print

My scrunch effect

Some learnings:

• it needs to be hot as well as sunny
• when the conditions are right the prints will dry really quite quickly - especially on thin silk
• soft leaves curl up in the heat
• this might seem obvious but the sun moves around a lot so you may find things end up half in the shade in no time, keep budging them around unless you have a huge garden
• something light/dark in the background will have an effect - dark makes the colour more saturated
• don't wet the fabric first and then try to lay it out on plastic - it's worse than treacle
• masks that are absorbent will pull the dye away from the surroundings leaving a halo effect
• acrylic paint doesn't work at all well

Roll on next summer...

My West Dean Summer

This summer I treated myself to two back-to-back residential courses at West Dean College near Chichester.

The college is located in a stunning house set in huge grounds that used to belong to Edward James, a surrealist poet and philanthropist. He was a double inheritee (from his father and his unlce) patron of Surrealist artist and there are several original Dali pieces at the house. There is an interesting documentary about him on YouTube

The courses I took were Jeanette Appleton's Exploring Colour and Transparency in Felt Making and Cas Holmes' Tracing Shadows - Dyed and Stitched Textiles. Both tutors were superb and I'd highly recommend them. As well as the location of course.

From Jeannette we learnt a softer much less messy and energetic way of felting. She advocates a pre-felting technique that uses none of this 100 rolls one way and then the next. And much less water that I was used to. You are left with a delicate, diaphanous piece of felt that has a handle I was not used to - not the thick stiff stuff, more like nuno, felt that falls like fabric. One of the best things about it is that you can do as much as you can/want, take a break and come back to it later.

She encouraged us to think in 3s - e.g. coarse, soft and something else - what is that third thing? Texture, contrast, colour, dimension? She also drew attention to the mark-making properties of felt.

Something that has had a great impact on me since is that she encouraged me to hang my pieces in three dimension in front of each other so you could see through. She also suggested looking at a space like a museum or an exhibition hall and thinking: how could I respond to it with my art?

I was rather prolific and came away with lots of resolved pieces - although my first piece was 'permanently borrowed' by someone!

Here's some of my work in Jeannette's class:

Felted pieces - one texture based and one colour based

Cutting things up to assemble

Felting the back

The piece coming together

A bit of rolling

The final piece that someone liked so much they borrowed it

The next piece coming along

Nearly finished

Detail of the mark-making capability of felt

Tacking threads left to show through

Hanging my finished pieces in a row

Two more finished pieces

Cas Holmes is a fan of recyling, reuse and repurposing - use what's around. In her first tutorial she used a fish skin from supper! We did heat transfer printing which I have totally fallen in love with. Lots of block printing and a little bit of sun printing because the weather was not at all condusive.

Cas encouraged us to build up a 'stock' of semi-worked pieces and audition them for resolved work which I am doing lots of now. The drawback is that I'm finding that things that would be samples are becoming 'stock' and I'm reluctant to stick them in my sketchbook.

I'm also a bit precious about taking next steps with 'samples' in case I mess up. Cas' philosophy would be that anything 'messed up' can be repurposed and auditioned for new work at a later time.

And this is what I came up with in Cas' class.

Preparing heat transfer paper

Some fabrics for 'audition'

Preparing mono printing

Applying wallpaper paste to pieces so that they run under the sewing machine easily without a hoop

Imaginative use of block print sources

Heat transfer results

More heat transfer preparations

Heat transfer results

Sun printing, but without much sun

Resolved (mostly) piece containing heat transfer, block printing and sewing

Making Tyvek Lace

I saw this short video on making lace with Tyvek and had to immediately try it.

Results not too shabby:

Not terribly successful but you learn from mistakes

Shown under the baking parchment

Shown still stuck to the stamps, cooling

I used the printing blocks/stamps I'd made in my August post on visual exercises.

A few learnings:

• set the iron between wool and cotton
• use rubber stamps (try one out beforehand) - I used this Super Soft Lino Block
• use baking parchment above and below
• be fast and press hard
• let the stamps cool after a few uses before carrying on

I love the randomness of the results even when you get the technique under control.

Really exited about the possibilities.