Feeling Blue

I first came across cyanotypes about ten years ago when I was on a feltmaking summer school. We were trying out lots of different dyeing and printing methods on felt but the cyanotypes had to be done with other fabrics as it did not work on wool. It was not a great success so I never thought about it again until a few years ago when I started to get into printing with a lot more enthusiasm. This is a process dicovered in Victorian times and it is recognised mainly as an alternative photographic process but many textile artists have used it because it works on cotton, linen, canvas or silk as well as paper.

When I experimented again a few years ago I was determined to see if I could find a way to use felt for cyanotypes but I hit failure at every turn. The process works by the combination of two chemicals - ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. You make them up in two separate solutions with distilled water and then combine them. All the time this is happening you have to keep the containers away from the light. Once the solution is mixed it is painted onto your substrate which is then left to dry. After exposure to the sun for a given time the substrate is rinsed out under running water and this is where the felt fails. The solution just washes away as it will not hold in the wool.

I finally cracked it when I combined the felt with silk via the nuno process. I managed to get the solution into the nuno fabric and it worked on the silk. When I washed it out the solution it still washed out of the felt base to this piece but it stayed in the silk layer. If I were to turn this fabric over you would see a white background. I love the texture of it and if you look closely at the surface the wool can clearly be seen where it has migrated through the silk.

Anyway, you know from my last post that Anna has inspired me to experiment with cyanotypes again so I ordered some more chemicals and on Friday the sun came out! Hooray! It was forecast for the whole weekend so I set to. The first experiment was using small pieces of Khadi cotton rag paper and some buttons. Now, once you're ready to expose the paper to the sun it's a good idea to place it on a board with either a piece of glass or perspex on top to anchor it down. That's fine for paper and flat objects but not buttons! All I did was leave them exposed for about 15 minutes. You can tell by the colour of the paper whether you've exposed it long enough. Then you take it to the sink and rinse under running water for what seems like ages. The Khadi paper held up well to the water but I did not get very clear impressions with these buttons. I don't know yet whether to do something else with them or just bind them into a stab bound book and chalk it up to experience. There are lots of choices as I could bleach the cyanotype and take the blue away, changing the colour with tea to brown or I could paint them again and cyanotype over them....

Whatever I do with those pieces, I have managed to complete one book project from this weekend's cyanotypes though. I cut these 4.5 inch squares of Bockingford 140lb Hot Pressed watercolour paper and coated them with the solution. I think it had started to weaken by this point as it wasn't brilliant but I was still quite happy with the results. I used a selection of little doilies that I buy obsessively (why?) from charity shops for pence and laid them one by one on the papers and exposed them in sunlight for 15 minutes minimum.

There were a couple of grand failures but I utilised them for the covers for this little book that I then made by folding five of the squares into lotus folds. I then glued them together and attached a piece of narrow ribbon to the stack of folded pieces before attaching the cover pieces which I mounted onto thicker board first.

This is a great little book structure and I always think what a great idea it makes for Christmas decorations (I'm sorry for mentioning the C word in August....) I am very pleased with my little book of lace doily samples but I am at an impasse as the sun has deserted us today despite the forecast - well it is a Bank Holiday in the UK so what do I expect?

I have some fabric pieces and some nuno felt that are ready to do something with. Fingers crossed for sun tomorrow and more experiments!