Experiments in SolarFast printing - part 1

 I was coating some silk noil for cyanotype printing, and I had some extra panels at hand. In the spirit of experimentation, and in an attempt to not hoard art supplies, I made some SolarFast prints. SolarFast is a solar dye product developed and sold by Jacquard Products. I had used it before to make botanical prints, and had used it last to make the colored panels in Luminosity, with transparencies. In both instances I had scrupulously followed directions, exposing the prints for 10-20 minutes. They are fairly easy to time, because the color shifts rather dramatically.

Since I'm blatantly disregarding cyanotype standards in my wet cyan work, I went rogue with these as well. I coated the silk noil with the dye and laid the leaves on the panels, pressing them down to make firm contact. Shown first is a wood poppy leaf with Red SolarFast, next are three leaves on Violet.

 Then a Japanese anemone leaf on Burnt Orange.

 And a hosta leaf on Green, and yes, it looks orange initially.

 I covered the panels with glass, partly to keep the leaves in close contact with the fabric, but also to fend off a bit of intermittent drizzle. Because the day was so overcast, and because I was curious to see what would happen, I left them out to expose for almost two hours, checking occasionally to make sure they didn't look overexposed or dried out.

And here they are are after exposure, in the same order, red, violet, burnt orange, and green.

 Here's a closeup of one of the leaves on the violet panel. You can see just a bit of the leaf veining, which is what I was hoping for.

SolarFast prints are finished by washing, in hot water with textile detergent. You need to do a through job of it by hand, or you can use a washing machine, as I did. Here are the finished prints:

I'm pretty happy with the results. There's not a lot of leaf veining detail apparent, but silk noil is very textured, so the fact that any came through is encouraging. This warrants further experimentation.

Full disclosure: I bought my original SolarFast stash in an early iteration when the product had a strong odor.  A few years ago a Jacquard rep sent me a few bottles to try of the newer, improved version. Aside from receiving the product I have not been compensated in any way.

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