Over Sun Printing

Today is all about over sun printing. Over sun printing is like over dyeing or over marbling. We are sun printing over an already sun printed piece. For directions on how to sun print, check out my posts here.

If you don’t have an already sun printed piece, go ahead and sun print your fabric. Once it’s dry, iron (to heat set), and then sun print again. If you have any questions about sun printing, check out my tutorials here.

For the above piece I used fresh ferns from the shade garden as the masks. I’m using Setacolor Light paints. This is the original piece.

It’s pretty, but it needed more. Also over sun printing is a great way to fix those “mistakes” or pieces you really don’t like. I added magenta over the wet fabric and added additional ferns. Here is my result again.

I went looking in my stash for a couple old sun printed pieces to over sun print. Here is the original.

Number stencils
Number stencils and potato masher sun print

I added orange and added the letter stencils again.

Another original.

Crafters Workshop Harlequin Stencil Sun Print fabric
Crafters Workshop Harlequin Stencil sun print fabric

I added orange and needlepoint canvas.

Here is another fern print which is a bit brighter than the first one I showed you. I forgot to take a before picture.

My friend Lisa Chin wrote a good post about this technique on the Printed Fabric Bee blog back in September. Check it out here.

I love how over sun printing adds a bit of complexity and depth to the piece. As I mentioned earlier, I also love how it can fix a piece.

I’ve learned quit a bit over the last several years about sun printing. I’ll be sharing some tips in my next post.

It’s such a fun technique that produces beautiful results. I hope you will try it this year.

Linking up to

Off The Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Mary

Can I get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Artist