New Prints made with Light

I’ve been busy in the studio, working through my stacks of new vintage doilies to print with (thanks Amy!), onto vintage hankies, napkins and tablecloths, using either cyanotype chemicals or SolarFast dye.

That coral color in the photo above? That one says Scarlet on the label of the SolarFast dye. I’ve tried their Red before and it’s a bit pinky. To be fair, the way the dye looks is affected by the type of fabric that you’re printing on. Still, I was hoping for a really, really red shade.

I was reminded that there are way more colors of SolarFast than the blue, violet and purple that I use a lot. I placed an order to try some new colors. Above is the “Avocado.” I don’t know why green is such a tricky color for SolarFast. I’ve previously found the Teal to not be Teal.

I also forgot that the green SolarFast dyes will stain your skin!

Here are more recent prints:

When I first started making these prints regularly, back in 2021, this is what I was doing, making prints of vintage doilies on vintage hankies, napkins and placemats. Then I started doing quotes, which I love, and also, I realized I hadn’t made a non-text based print in a while.

I’m still printing text too. Here’s the same one, in two colors:

Here it is in coral, made using the product called Scarlet.

Oh, I should explain that quote. I was at a group residency, where each of us did a five minute presentation on our art practice. A lot of my art is about domestic labor, labor by women, invisible labor, even when it’s not overtly “about” anything, it’s still about that, if I’m printing doilies; the doilies are a stand-in for un-appreciated labor by women.

So, a fellow artist, after my presentation says, “So, you just want more help around the house?” (rim shot.)

Yes, yes, I’m devoting my art career to getting my husband to vacuum more./s. Uh, no. It’s not about my husband, or my family, at all. It’s about an entire system that extracts unpaid labor from women. All the kinds of labor: emotional labor, domestic labor, care work, all the things. THAT’s what I’m drawing attention to and critiquing, sometimes in a quieter, craftivist way, and sometimes in a much more in your face way.

I don’t know that I answered as well as I wished, in the moment. But heck yes, I remembered. And you know, 2-3 years later, I formulated my response and printed it in light reactive dye on a vintage hankie (or is it a napkin?). Twice.

Why does the text sometimes get distorted in SolarFast Dye prints?

As you can see, in the purple print, the text is wavy and in the coral one, it’s not. What are the variables? I mostly print on vintage linens – hankies, napkins, placemats, runners and tablecloths. Mostly cotton and linen. The purple hankie I used was very thin, and SolarFast is printed when the dye is freshly applied to the paper or cloth – so everything is wet. This means that even though I do my best to spread out the wet, floppy hankie, sometimes it prints wavy. I see this as part of the charm of the process.

I suspect that the coral hankie is made out of slightly thicker cloth. I accidentally used too much dye on the coral one, but I don’t think that’s a factor.

On to Some Cyanotypes and SolarFast vs. Cyanotype

You will have noticed that I print both with SolarFast dye and with cyanotypes.  Why?  Mostly practical reasons, such as, cyanotypes are printed when the paper or fabric is dry, you mix the chemicals together, equal parts of A and B, apply it to the substrate and then allow that to dry in darkness.  When it’s dry, you then set up your print in a dim room before exposing it, ether outside or with a UV light box.  Above is what it looked like when I printed three cyanotypes outside for a quilt on the theme of luck

Cyanotypes rinse out in about five minutes, using just water, and some optional additives.

You can buy paper and fabric pre-treated with cyanotype chemicals, and while quality varies a lot, the Jacquard pre-treated cotton is excellent. The cotton is tightly woven and evenly coated with the cyanotype chemicals. I doubt I could do such a consistent job of the coating. If you buy the 30 pack of fabric on sale/from a discount provider of art supplies, it’s close to a dollar per sheet of fabric. That’s an incredible deal for the time savings.

In contrast, SolarFast rinses out using SolarFast wash (or Dawn) in ten minutes under running water. A cyanotype can expose in as little as 5 minutes in the sun, a bit longer in a light box. This means I can expose two more cyanotypes as I’m rinsing my SolarFast prints, making excellent use of my time in the studio.

All in all, there’s no big art reason why I choose one over the other. The factors are – do I want to print this tomorrow, after treating it and letting it dry, or do I want to print it now? Do I want to add this to a quilt, or do I need this to be on a vintage linen?

The final factor is that SolarFast dye tends to stain things that it comes into contact with when it’s wet, such as the plastic film negatives (transparencies) that I use to print photographs. This means if I print a photograph with Solar Fast, I have to throw that transparency away. If I print it with cyanotype, which is printed dry, I can use the transparency again and again. All very practical.

If you want to get started with cyanotypes, it’s definitely easier to start with the pre-treated. Many photography websites will declare that you simply must coat your own paper! I think this is snobby and keeps people from trying.

There are some brands of pre-treated cyanotype paper that are entirely adequate to even good. You have to start somewhere, and it’s a bit of a hurdle to find a dim space to coat your papers or fabrics, and even more of a hurdle to set up a really good, dark place for them to dry. After having a jury-rigged set up for a year or more, I’m only now committing to a really good drying cabinet, which will literally be a cabinet. I’m taking out the shelf, putting in a modified sweater drying rack, and putting a back out curtain over the cabinet doors. That’s on Monday, wish me luck.

Here’s a print I did this week, using the Jacquard pre-treated cyanotype cotton.  If you look carefully, you’ll see that I accidentally placed this negative down the wrong way, so the text is backwards.  Either I took this photo, or my husband did.  We were both touring the cemetery and taking some of the same photos.  (I can track it down and figure out whose photo it is.)

One of the reasons I started using cyanotype was to quickly print a lot of words to add to a quilt. Such as in this quilt top, “We Can’t Afford to Live on Love.”  (Or, as I call it in my head, “The Cat Food One.”  Isn’t that fabric fabulous?  The cat food tins and the money fabric are both from Spoonflower.  The scrappy border is from a bag of quilt blocks and pieces that a friend gave me.

I still haven’t quilted this one because I wanted to send it out to be long-arm quilted, but an all over-edge to edge quilting design might interfere with the readability of the text.  (Edge to edge costs less.)  So I will probably have to quilt this one myself, but I haven’t yet gotten brave enough to face it.

I’ve also used laser cut, individual letters for this purpose and that gets expensive quickly.  (It could certainly be less it I cut them out myself, using a Cricut or laser cutter at a Maker Space.)

Want to Learn to Print Cyanotypes and SolarFast?

I have a blog post on learning to print cyanotypes, a bit of the history, and links to good, free tutorial and an inexpensive online class.  To learn to print SolarFast, just check out the Jacquard videos and instructions, which are short, yes, and yes, it really is that simple!

See what a teacher I am?  I start out to write a blog post to just show you my new work, and end up teaching you stuff.  I can’t seem to help it.  I’ve taught six classes this past week and seem to be always in teaching mode.  When I learn a new process, part of me is also thinking about how I would teach it.

One last word on Cyanotype vs. SolarFast.  Jacquard produces and sells both products, here’s their official word on it, in a Fact Sheet. I figure they have no incentive to favor one product over the other, so this feels like an even handed comparison.

There you go!  Some new prints!  These are all part of my Summer Residency in Reuse, where I’m spending more time in the studio (working around my teaching schedule), visiting creative reuse stores, and using stuff from my stash – which includes plenty of vintage doilies and linens.