Sun Printing 2020

Because it’s been hot and sunny, it was time to do some sun printing.

My go-to paints for sun printing are Pebeo Setacolor Transparent/Light Fabric Paint. For information on the actual sun printing procedure, my tips, and lots of sun printing posts, check out this link.

I did print some different things this year. I started with the asparagus ferns. I don’t know why I never thought about using them before.

Here is the first piece.

Then I had to see what it looked like stitched. Oh, I like that.

So I wanted to do more with the asparagus ferns since I was happy with the results. Here are the next four pieces in the sun. As I’ve said in previous tutorials, I do the painting and the placing of the masks (botanicals or whatever) in the garage. I place the wet fabric on a piece of plastic on top of a piece of cardboard. That makes it easy for me to carry it out to the sun.

Here are the two asparagus fern prints.

The next two are leaves from an ornamental grass in our shade garden. Here is one of them in the sun.

And the finished pieces.

I love how I learn something every time I go back to techniques I’ve done so many times before. This time I discovered that, especially with the asparagus ferns, I really needed to use less water with the paint. I’ll be able to bring them out with stitches, but they are pretty light when the paint is also light. I found that I loved using the grasses.

In the past, I’ve been stuck on regular ferns. Using the asparagus ferns and the grasses opens up a whole new bunch of designs. So if you are wanting to sun print, think about the marks you want on the fabric. Remember that, like the asparagus fern, you will get a very light print. But then printing with a big leaf or flower (Yep, I’ve tried that) you will end up with a big blob of white!

As mentioned above, be sure and check out my previous sun printing posts here.  For more inspiration, check out the Off  The Wall Friday links.

Have a great weekend!