Sunprinting at the cottage

When we were at the cottage I also did some sunprinting.  I've been doing that for several years now because the conditions at the cottage are perfect for sunprinting with Pebeo Transparent paints.  I dilute the paint half with water and brush it onto white cotton fabric.  Then I lay on some leaves or foliage.  Here are some fabrics drying on a drop sheet in the sun.

Below is a typical sunprint like I've usually made in the summer.  I like adding salt.  The last few years I've started making them 18 X 22 inches so I can sell them at Fibre Fling the next spring.

This year I'm working on adding some layers of interest by sunprinting first and then putting paint on the plants and printing them directly onto the fabric.  That's what I've done on the  piece below.  Thanks for stopping by to have a look!

Ecoprinting at the cottage

We spent a week at the family cottage and I did some ecoprinting there.  I scoured a vintage cotton sheet and prepared it for printing at home.  Here are some strips which I bundled up with plant materials hanging on the wash line afterwards.  I'm pleased with the colours because cotton is harder to print than protein fibres like silk and wool. You can really see the wild grape.

I also did a series on watercolour paper.  The print in the photo below was done with sumac and madder powder sprinkled around it.

The prints below were done with linden leaves and ferns and hibiscus flowers around them.  The dark purple bits are logwood.  I want to try using them on cotton and silk too.

In the prints below I used Labrador Tea and a Black Eyed Susan on the left and a beech branch on the right.  Both prints still have logwood in them.  The colour is softer the farther away in the stack the logwood is.

I used sumac again in the print on the left below.  It must be quite potent at the moment because it totally bled through into the next print which is tansy and mullein.

Rust Dyeing

I've become interested in rust dyeing and rusted a few pieces over the weekend.  These are cotton and I wet them with vinegar and wrapped them in steel wool and wrapped them in plastic.  Then I put them on the hot back deck for a few hours and left them overnight.  Here they are on the line the next morning after being washed out with gentle natural soap.  Now that they've been rust dyed they will take tannin very well so my next step will be to put some tannin-rich plants on them and eco  print them. I put a yarn doily on the long sleeved t-shirt to act as a resist and it just left a circle.  I will stamp something in the circle.  Please leave a comment or email any comments to me at connietb@sympatico.ca

The two pieces of cotton are vintage fabric serviettes that I inherited from my parents.  They have a nice texture.

Ecoprinting on cotton

Cotton is a little more difficult to ecoprint because vegetable fibres don't take the colour as well.  But if you rust dye it first and then add some plant material to it you get better results.  You're limited to brown and black but the results are good.   This a sumac branch that I folded into previously rust dyed cotton fabric.  I also sprinkled on some black tea for extra tannin.

Ecoprinting on watercolour paper

I did some ecoprinting a few weeks ago when we had cool weather.  Since then it has heated up.  This morning it has cooled down again so maybe I'll do some more printing tomorrow morning.  Here are some prints I did on 90 lb watercolour paper.  These are 9 X 12 inches.  On the left is a branch of a plant from my garden (not sure yet what) and on the right is a buckthorn branch and some wild grapes I saved in the freezer last fall.

The prints below are maple leaves and tulip petals on the left and tulips and horsetail on the right.

More collages

I really like to make collages.  I take the little scraps of material I have and put them on a background.  Usually a background fabric that I don't like that much so I can find a use for it.  Then I put a piece of sheer material on top and sew the layers together with decorative stitching.

For this first piece I didn't put any batting behind it and I also used pieces of silver paper saved from a chocolate bar.  I free motion stitched the layers together.

For the piece below I did put batting behind it and I used the decorative stitches on my machine to stitch the layers together.  I also experimented with putting different coloured sheers on top in different areas.  This one is large enough to cover a small journal or make a small wall hanging.

What to do with an old dish towel

I've been helping my parents sort through all their stuff and I ended up with a dish towel.  I wasn't really going to use it as a dish towel so I decided to make it into a little bag.  I simply cut off two of the blue ends to make a handle and then sewed the sides together and made a box finish at the bottom.  Washable and the right size to put lunch in!