Sun Printed Spirals

I tried using paper stencils to sun print spirals and tree shapes onto fabric. Did my first color both outside and inside with a 150W bulb. I actually got better results from doing it inside, plus I didn’t have to deal with any breezes blowing the paper stencils away.

Some interesting results happened by layering a green paint and stencils over the yellow, but the results are too subtle for what I want. I tried to order soy wax to use as a resist. Am waiting now since it is out of stock. 

Coffee Cup Coasters

Here are the results of my silk screening project. I gave some sets like these away for Christmas presents before I took any photos. Then I made another set for myself plus a few extras. I have lots of leftover prints which I thought I would give away to quilter friends.


I decided I liked the prints better on fabrics which were printed with an allover large scale print. I only had a couple of small upholstery samples, so off to the fabric store for some printed canvas.

Not all of the words showed up well do to the problems I had developing the screen, and a few of the details have been lost from my design. But overall, I think it was a successful project and a good learning experience. I may opt to cut stencils or get thermofax stencils made for future screening projects.

Go to Off the Wall Friday to see what others have been up to this week. There are some great things up there already.

Screen Printing

I am taking graphic arts classes at Laney College, and it has been keeping me busy. This semester I took anIntro to Design, Typography, and InDesign. I’ve put some of my work from this year up on lindacline.synthasite.com. Some older classwork from photoshop and illustrator classes is there as well.

An assignment in positive/negative space left me with several designs which looked like coasters. I decided I should make coasters for Christmas presents, and the best way I could think to transfer the design was silk screen. This was a learning experience.



My first challenge was finding a clamp on shop lamp with a high enough rating to take a 150 watt bulb. Then I had to order the correct bulb in order to follow my exposure instructions.

Next I questioned the exposure time in the Speedball instructions. 15 inches high for only 7 minutes if I have a shop reflector, but 12 inches high for 45 minutes if I use a pie pan reflector. A service rep at Speedball said that shop reflectors can vary greatly, and I should do a test before I do my expose my final screen. This website gave helpful instructions for testing exposure times. Rather than going out to photocopy onto a transparency, I used an old transparency with a small amount of typing on it, and painted numbers with acrylic paint. To make sure my paper for covering up numbers every five minutes was opaque enough, I glued aluminum foil to the back of some scratch paper. I ended up with 15 inches high for 85 minutes, and have decided the 7 minutes in the instructions has to be a typo.

Coating the screen evenly seemed impossible. I have an older screen, and don’t know if it is silk or polyester. It seems to stretch slightly when it gets wet, which made my squeegee only able to touch the screen near the edges after I had emulsion on the front. I ended up trying to smooth out the emulsion and make it smooth with a paintbrush.

After exposing it, the places where the emulsion was thicker didn’t want to rinse out, so my prints ended up somewhat spotty. I also learned that the glass holding down the transparency should cover the whole design. I thought the being a quarter inch short on the sides wouldn’t matter, but it left a line where the edge of the glass was. The courser light fabric in this photo is my drapes, and not part of the screen.

Making the prints was a simple process in comparison to developing the screen, and went rather quickly. I made some coasters for Christmas presents out of some, and have given them out without photos. I am making a couple of more sets and will show them in another post.

Spirit Week

I’ve tried freezer paper as a stencil for painting today. Spirit Week is next week at Camilla’s school. I drew the stylized version of the school mascot onto freezer paper, cut it out, and ironed it over the side seam of an old pair of jeans.

Some white acrylic paint, and now she has a custom pair of pants for spirit week.

I tried this technique once before, and had trouble with the freezer paper coming up while I was painting, so did a test before I got out the paint this time. It worked just the way it was supposed to. Perhaps the difference was in the paint. I had used Setacolors last time which are a bit thinner than the artists acrylic I used today. Also, I was careful when moving the brush across the paper.

Clean-up Cloths and Succulents

You can lay painting projects on top of plastic sheeting when you paint, and use paper towels to wipe the paint out of brushes between colors. But it’s more fun to lay work on top of another piece of fabric, and use the edges of the cloth underneath to clean the brush. If there’s leftover paint on my pallet, I sometimes get out stencils and decorate the cloth some more. I’ve been using this fabric for a drop cloth and clean-up rag for a year or more now.

Another two succulent quilts are in progress. I chose a closer cropped view of the center of a succulent plant for this month’s Fast Friday theme “Close Up or Far View” with a focus on “Value”. I believe cropping the succulent this close will make it seem more abstract.
I decided to try this composition twice. Once with a fabric fairly close in color to the actual plant, and once with a corner cut from my old drop cloth and clean-up rag. I think I need to balance the colors with some more stenciling, before I begin painting to define the succulent form.

Final Rusting Results

I am happy with how these turned out.

I may pull out the smaller piece again at some other time to add another layer of design and color, but for now I am done with rusting.

Now I need to find something to wrap the rusting stake in, so I can store it safely in my work area for the next time I get the urge to add rust to fabric.

More What I Expected

My second attempt at rusting was more successful. I peeked yesterday and saw definite rusting on the fabric, and then left it another day to be sure I was getting good results. Today I soaked the fabric in salt water and washed it. I like the textured look that resulted.

I wrapped it once more to fill in some of the empty spots. So now I am back to waiting until Thursday, and then I will peek again. These photos are the wet fabric. I expect the finished fabric will appear a bit lighter in color.

Where’s the Rust?

Yesterday I peeked under the plastic at the fabric I started rusting. The string tying the fabric to the stake had turned orange, so I guessed the rust had done it’s job. But when I undid everything, there were hardly any marks on the fabric. Not even worth a photo.

The stake originally had some kind of black paint or other coating on it. Perhaps it hadn’t weathered off enough. Or maybe I scrunched the fabric up too much so that not enough of it was in contact with the rust.

So today I scraped off some of the remaining coating from the stake and rewrapped the fabric around the stake with a bit less scrunching. I will give it a few days this time before I peek.

Rusting Fabric

Rusting fabric seems to be very popular right now among fiber artists. I hadn’t given it much thought until this morning when I found a forgotten iron stake rusting in the flower bed. It was the perfect opportunity to try rusting my own fabric.

I selected a few pieces of fabric, tied them around the pole, soaked the tied fabric in vinegar, and wrapped it in plastic. Halfway through the process, I did a bit of internet searching to find out if I was doing it right. Kimberly Baxter Packwood has a great how-to and Q & A pages on rusting on her website. She recommends letting the fabric sit 24 hours before neutralizing the fabric. I wonder if I want to let mine set a bit longer since my metal wasn’t very rusty when I started. However, I don’t want to wait so long that the fabric rots away either.
Reading Kimberly’s Q & A page, I learned that rusted fabric is not archival. The rust will bond with the fibers and continue to rust indefinitely. How long does it take rust to actually eat a hole in fabric? Perhaps I need to be careful how I use rusted fabric in my quilted art pieces. I suppose it depends on how rusted a piece of fabric is, and whether a few holes will matter artistically and structurally.

I will show the fabrics again after I have untied and washed them.