Experiments in wet cyanotype, part 3

Emboldened by some success with experiments so far (see part 1 and part 2), I got slightly obsessive about making more prints.

The pre-treated cotton muslin was fun to play with, but realistically I was unlikely to use it in a quilt, which is the ultimate goal here, so I put that aside and worked with just my preferred cotton sateen that I had treated with the cyanotype chemicals. The sateen soaks up a lot of product, so there was a lot to react with the moisture during the long exposures.

I also started working a bit larger, using 9 x 12 inch panels and some 16 x 20. For round three I used plume poppy, Japanese anemone, and wood poppy leaves. I also used a bit more moisture, lightly spraying the foam board before laying the fabric on, and spraying again before topping with the glass. I continued to use dilute red dye-na-flow in the first spray, but I'm not certain it made as much of an impact on the sateen as it did on the muslin.

I am still not entirely used to these long exposures. My old normal was 10 - 15 minutes, so 24 hours is a long time to wait! I did have the fun of hovering over them and checking them frequently.

Here's the unrinsed prints after about 24 hours.

They are dark and lovely and mysterious.

It's sort of a shame they can't stay this way, but I have the images to enjoy.

And voila! Here are the finished images. Once again, I was surprised and amazed.

I felt like I was starting to suss out a good working method. The images are still unpredictable, but falling into a sort of pattern.

Time to make more and more!

July 2022 Update: This post has been doing some numbers, so I wanted to say hello, and thank you, to everyone stopping by. I also wanted to let you know that this exploration turned into a series of 78 posts, and counting! You can easily access them, in reverse chronological order, by clicking on the Wet Cyanotype tab in the top header. I share a lot of details about what I've tried, and am always honest about the results in each post. Mixed in is the occasional post showing artquits I've made with my prints. I hope you enjoy reading my blog, learn a thing or two, and try your own hand at this very enjoyable process. 

Thanks as always for reading! You can also follow along on your platform of choice:

Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/suerenostudio
Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/suereno (on hiatus right now)
Tumblr: http://suerenostudio.tumblr.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sue_reno_studio/

Experiments in wet cyanotype, part 2

 In my previous post about experimenting with wet cyanotype, I speculated that some paint stains on the foam board I was using had transferred onto some of the prints. This led me to speculate further about what would happen if I added pigment to the process purposefully. So I set up for another round. This time I misted the foam board with water to which I had added just a bit of Jacquard Dyn-na-Flow #84 Salmon color. Above, I used a plume poppy leaf, and below, a painted fern frond, on freshly treated cotton sateen.

 I did the same, using Japanese anemone leaves on old stock commercially treated muslin. Then I misted the glass cover with plain water, covered them up, and waited.

 Again, on the muslin, I could see color shifts almost immediately.

About 18 hours into the exposure, a big thunderstorm sprang up unexpectedly while I was away, and drenched the experiment. The glass preventing any direct rain contact, but a lot of water seeped in around the edges.  Oh, the drama! I hovered over them anxiously:

 I let them sit a few hours longer in the hope that some of the water would drain off, then brought them in. They were very wet, and I was hesitant to rinse the prints for fear it would all wash away, so they went into a dark, air conditioned room to dry off.  They did look pretty cool at this point:

 And then, the big reveal after rinsing and drying! This plume poppy leaf print is just fabulous. There's just so much going on here, and it's all good. I was practically beside myself with joy:

 Here's the other three from this batch, after exposure and before rinsing:

 And here's the finished prints:

 The pinkish tones from the Dye-na-flow show up the most on the coarser muslin fabric.

Up next: full blown printmaking frenzy mode.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting.

July 2022 Update: This post has been doing some numbers, so I wanted to say hello, and thank you, to everyone stopping by. I also wanted to let you know that this exploration turned into a series of 78 posts, and counting! You can easily access them, in reverse chronological order, by clicking on the Wet Cyanotype tab in the top header. I share a lot of details about what I've tried, and am always honest about the results in each post. Mixed in is the occasional post showing artquits I've made with my prints. I hope you enjoy reading my blog, learn a thing or two, and try your own hand at this very enjoyable process. 

Thanks as always for reading! You can also follow along on your platform of choice:

Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/suerenostudio
Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/suereno (on hiatus right now)
Tumblr: http://suerenostudio.tumblr.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sue_reno_studio/

Experiments in wet cyanotype

 I've been making cyanotype prints on fabric for many years. It's my favorite surface design technique, and I feature the prints in many of my art quilts. Over time I've really honed my practice, producing my preferred dark, crisply outlined prints on hefty cotton sateen, by carefully controlling the process and the exposure times.

Lately I've been intrigued by several Instagram accounts of artists featuring wet cyanotypes, tagged #wetcyan. There are lots of variations, and most artists are working on paper, but the main idea is to incorporate moisture and go for very long exposure times, 24 hours or more (a normal exposure is 10 minutes). The process breaks down the chemicals to produce swirls and colors shifts in the prints, and I find that beautiful and intriguing. So I decided to give it a try.

 I started with cotton sateen that I had treated in November, laid on a foam insulation board. I laid down Japanese anemone leaves and Christmas fern fronds as my resist. I used a sprayer to mist water on a pane of glass and covered it all up. I set it all in a sunny location on a very hot afternoon. (All pictures blow up when clicked.)

 After a half hour I could see funky things beginning to happen, but I was concerned I hadn't added enough moisture, so I spritzed a bit more around the edges and let it creep in.

 The next day brought a forecast for heavy thunderstorms, so after 18 hours I pulled the prints and brought them indoors. Here's how they looked at that point:

 They were fairly moist, and I thought it wouldn't hurt and might help if they dried before rinsing, so I put them in a dark room for several hours. Finally, I rinsed them out and dried them. This is how they finished:

 I'm happy with the results. I love all the subtleties of tone, and the golden and greenish tints.

But wait, there's more! In the fall of 2015 I made a lot of samples for an article on cyanotype printing I was writing for Quilting Arts Magazine. Towards that end I bought some pre-treated cotton cyanotype fabric from a new-to-me online supplier. It was an OK product, certainly competitively priced, but loosely woven muslin, and not heavily saturated with chemical. After making the samples I had set the rest aside. By now the fabric was well past its prime, but it seemed like a good candidate for experimentation since I had nothing to prove and nothing to lose. So I set up a parallel exposure, this time with a painted fern and Japanese anemone leaves. For this one I misted the foam board as well as the glass.

 I could see the chemicals moving around the fabric immediately:

 After the same 18 hour exposure, here were the unwashed prints.

 After drying and rinsing, they turned out like this. Very cool!

 I was a bit mystified by the pink tones at first. Then I realized that I had used that foam board for making painted prints previously. I always clean it off, and I've never had the leftover paint stains transfer before, but I'm speculating that cooking in the sun on a hot day may have loosened some of the red pigments.

This was successful and interesting enough that I'm going to give it another round of experimentation.  Stay tuned!

July 2022 Update: This post has been doing some numbers, so I wanted to say hello, and thank you, to everyone stopping by. I also wanted to let you know that this exploration turned into a series of 78 posts, and counting! You can easily access them, in reverse chronological order, by clicking on the Wet Cyanotype tab in the top header. I share a lot of details about what I've tried, and am always honest about the results in each post. Mixed in is the occasional post showing artquits I've made with my prints. I hope you enjoy reading my blog, learn a thing or two, and try your own hand at this very enjoyable process. 

Thanks as always for reading! You can also follow along on your platform of choice:

Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/suerenostudio
Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/suereno (on hiatus right now)
Tumblr: http://suerenostudio.tumblr.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sue_reno_studio/

February 2026 Update: I'm still here, and still making new prints (among other things). I just posted Experiments in wet cyanotype - part 100, and I'd love for you to take a look and stay current. 

 

And here's the list of my current social media feeds, I hope to see you follow along on one or more of these as well: 

Threads: www.threads.net/@sue_reno_studio

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/suerenostudio

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sue_reno_studio/ 

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/suereno.bsky.social

In Dreams I Drifted Away - Part 3

 They don't call it "slow stitching" for nothing. I've been working on hand piecing hexagons for one of my current works-in-progress, In Dreams I Drifted Away, and it's been time consuming. I'm not complaining, just noting. I enjoy handwork, and it was a good project to pick up in a spare moment or on a rainy day during my busy spring gardening season. I used the English paper piecing method, where each piece of fabric is basted around a paper hexagon, then the hexagons are whip-stitched together. Once it's all stitched, you pull out the papers, and that's what I was doing in the photo above.
 Traditionally, the cloth hexagons are cut with a scant 1/4" allowance, to make hand quilting them easier. I didn't want to be that fussy with my cutting, and I wanted a bit of extra bulk in the hexies to make them stand out from the ground cloth I would be appliqueing the composition onto, so you see that extra fabric on the back view.

 As I was working on the hexies, I was also auditioning the other fabrics for the quilt.  You can see a corner of the needlefelted center panel on the right, above. That lovely bit of orange Mysore silk made the cut; that ombre red and purple one, as much as I love it, did not.

 The hexagon assembly was machine appliqued onto a background of gorgeous Mysore silks, and I added couched threads as part of the larger design.

 Once the entire quilt top was finished, I layered it with batting and the painted back (as shown in this previous post) and began the quilting.

 It is shaping up quite nicely.  Below is a shot of the back with the quilting begun.

Stay tuned!  And as always, thanks for reading and commenting.

Lectures, and painting quilt backs

 Did you know I give lectures? It's a fun part of my job. I encourage people to find and follow their unique creative paths. I start with a digital presentation about inspirations, techniques, and working methods, followed by a trunk show. I bring a big stack of my exhibition quilts, and volunteers walk them around the room so everyone can see the details.

 In April I was honored to be the guest speaker for the Q.U.I.LT., Inc. Guild for their quilt show in Troy, NY. They put on a terrific show, with hundreds of beautiful quilts, and great vendors. They saw to every detail, and treated me extremely well.  As part of their programming I gave my lecture on two consecutive days. Both times, the backs of my quilts caught people's eyes and interest.

My quilts are made to display on a wall, so ordinarily the backs are not visible. But I spend a lot of time working on the quilting, and it makes me happy if the back is custom made to match the imagery on the front. So for several years now I have been painting the cloth for the back side of the quilt.

 Here's how I do it. I start with a length of cotton sateen that's pfd--prepared for dying-- meaning that it doesn't have any finishes that would prevent the cotton from taking up dyes or paints. I like sateen because it has a bit more heft than a flat weave, without being too bulky. I buy it in 60" wide bolts, but it it's a large quilt I may need to piece it to size.

 I sweep off the driveway on a nice sunny day and lay out the fabric, weighing it at the corners in case of a breeze.  I use textile paints in colors that seem appropriate for the quilt, and dilute them with water.  I don't measure, but eyeball it at about a 1:4 ratio.  I drip and/or swirl the paint on the fabric. In this instance I started with dry fabric, let the paint sit for a few minutes, then misted it with the hose.

 I let that partially dry, then came back with another round of dripping and swirling, this time with a complementary color.  Again, I misted with the hose.

 Then I let the fabric dry in the sun,  As it dries, the paint wicks across the fabric and forms patterns.  My driveway is old and really should be replaced, but I've been hesitating because the cracks in it cause the most wonderful designs:

 Once it's dry, I heat set the paint, then rinse the cloth to remove any bits of outdoor dirt. This particular back is for one of my current works in progress, In Dreams I Drifted Away.  More on that quilt to follow.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting.

With special thanks to Q.U.I.L.T., Inc. for inviting me, and to Peggy Rinella for the pictures.

In Dreams I Drifted Away -Part 2

 While I was intermittently working on In Dreams I Drifted Away, the opportunity to attend the James Webb Space Telescope Artist Project came up. I was soon heavily invested in making Luminosity. (You can read about the NASA visit, the quilt, and the exhibit by clicking the JWST tab at the top, or go here.) The centerpiece of that work was a set of hand-stitched silk hexagons representing the telescope mirrors:

Prior to this I had never worked with English paper piecing, but it was the perfect technique for this application. I enjoyed it enough that I began piecing more hexagons, just to have a hand sewing project while waiting around for an auto oil change and such. Some of the fabrics I used were leftover dye prints from making Luminosity, because they were at hand. You can see parts of the telescope imagery in the pink and orange hexagons:

As I worked I thought about how my my work to date about the Susquehanna River has grown from my personal detailed observations of it, in various states, and from various locales. 52 Ways to Look at the River in particular was about these observations. Working on the JWST project has expanded my outlook, and I realized that there is a wealth of observation and knowledge about the river that has been recorded by scientific methods. As one small example, I happened upon this video about satellite EO-1 that includes an image of the Susquehanna from 2011.

This type of observation and data has never been more important, and would seem to be at increasing risk of being unavailable for continued research. So my hexagons in this work represent the satellites and other technology that we collectively as a species are reliant on.

Now that my concept is clear, it will be easy to expand on it. These gelli plate prints I made last year are going to fit in perfectly.