A while back I promised a tutorial on Sun Printing. Now that Spring is well underway and the Sun has returned for a lot of us – it’s Time!
Materials you will need:
- Fabric – 100% cotton – preferably white – prewashed in detergent and dried
Cut fabric to 15 inches by 15 inches
- Plastic sheet – to protect work surface
- Clothes you don’t mind getting paint on
- A piece of heavy cardboard covered with plastic to use as your portable work surface. It should be a couple of inches larger than your fabric piece all around.
- Duct tape to secure plastic
- Straight pins
Prepared work surface and wet fabric
- Paint: sun sensitive fabric paint such as Dye-Na-Flow (from Lumiere) or light sensitive Setacolor fabric paint
- Foam brushes ½ inch to 1 ½ inch
- Plastic bowls (one for each color that you will use – recommend 1 to 3 for your first project)
- Spritzer bottle with water
Masking Items:
These are the items that you will use to create your design. They can be almost anything that will lay flat on the fabric and create a shape.
Found items such as old keys, coins of various sizes, buttons, safety pins, string of beads.
Hardware items such as washers, nuts and bolts, various size screws
Natural items: fronds, leaves, petals
Stencils (for reverse pattern)
Cut out shapes
A variety of objects can be used to mask areas of your painted surface and produce your print
Steps
- Secure your fabric to work board with pins. I occasionally will use masking tape on the edges instead.
- Wet down fabric thoroughly with water/spritzer bottle
- Select paint colors, mix a small amount of each color with 2 parts water: one color per bowl
- Wet foam brush and start painting fabric. Remember this is a background. It doesn’t have to resemble anything; it is simply a colorful backdrop for your printing items. While painting with color #1, leave white spaces for additional colors.
- As you add your additional colors, spritz more water to help the colors spread and mix at the edges.
- Have your masking items ready to arrange on your fabric immediately, especially if you are outside on a warm sunny day!
7. Quickly arrange masking items (see above – rose bush leafs) on to wet painted surface of fabric.
8. Take fabric – along with work surface to a sunny spot and allow to dry for 30 minutes to an hour – depending on temperature and humidity.
9. Remove masks when completely dry.
10. Press fabric with a hot dry iron for about 4 minutes to set the paint.
The results
More Rose Leafs – different color scheme
Printed with a variety of hardware
