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...