Most of the images are from my photographs and scans; some have been altered to be more graphic. Two are appropriated, one from a vintage photo found in a thrift shop and one that was scanned from a 1930s book. The picture on the upper right (looks a little like mountains) is stylized merry-go-round horses, painted with dye.

This was a scanned leaf that was altered in PhotoShop Elements with the “stamp” filter to emphasize its lines.  On the left is the final print; on the right is the negative that was used. It was printed on my inkjet printer.

After exposing the cloth with a mixture of violet/brown SolarFast, there wasn’t enough contrast, so I painted around the edges with grey/green and then with a darker mixture of red/violet.

Green threads were used to outline the leaf with quilting. (The purple lines are the lacy edge of another doily.)

This vintage photo was photographed and made into a high-contrast negative in the darkroom. When I exposed the doily with blue SolarFast, I left it too long in the sunshine and was disappointed because the image was very dark. Then I turned the doily over and saw that there was a nice image showing on the back, although it was too light. So the cloth was recoated with blue and the negative was flipped over and carefully placed on the existing image on the back of the first print, to be exposed again for less time.

A mixture of SolarFast blue and red was painted onto the large doily in the middle of the art quilt, shown in the detail here, and then stems of plants from the garden were placed directly on the damp dye. A piece of glass kept the fronds in fairly close contact with the cloth and it was placed in direct, strong sunlight. You need to be careful to keep the piece at a consistent angle to the sun while exposing because you don’t want sunlight to creep under the edges of the plants and soften the edges of the image. This is true when you are using a negative as well, but is especially important when using objects with some depth. I like to mix the dye colors, and because the SolarFast dye has very little color until exposed, the results are sometimes surprising, but I usually like them.

This image was made by two separate exposures after the cloth had been coated with a combination of violet and black Solarfast. The negatives were made in the darkroom by placing the thistles directly on the film, and the negative images are very sharp. (You couldn’t get that sharp an image by scanning thistles because they are so three-dimensional. You would have to work from very clear photos.)

The negative for the thistle in the middle was given a shorter exposure, then the negative was removed and replaced with the second one, which was given a longer exposure.

To make the lacy edges dark enough, a round piece of black plastic was used to mask the center. You can see where it curled up a little and part of the cloth was further exposed around the edges.

The letter shapes on the right are shiny, silver stick-on letters that come on clear sheets of acetate. The doily on the left was exposed with those sheets instead of with a negative.

The pale blue happened because I didn’t wash out unexposed dye on the doily carefully enough, an important step.  (I liked the old, torn cloth in the middle that shows the layers underneath.)

The    The negatives on the right were used to create the blue face image (partially covered by lace). Working from the original 35mm negative, I gave the high-contrast film different amounts of light in the darkroom. The detail in light parts of the face comes from the bottom negative that lets in more light. Then I used the top negative and gave it more time, making parts of the image darker.

The other doily (also my friend Clare), had diluted fabric paint added after washing out unexposed maroon dye.

My next post will be on how to create negatives with image software and print them out on transparency material — from choosing an appropriate photo to a little information about printers. Although I have described here how I made film negatives in years gone by, I now work with PhotoShop Elements (a fairly inexpensive version of PhotoShop), and that’s what I will be demonstrating. It can all be done with home inkjet printers. After that, I plan to finish up the posts on light-sensitive dye by showing the exact steps for creating a photo image on cloth with a photo negative, from mixing the dye to the important washing-out step.

Light-sensitive dyes come in opaque plastic bottles, and in lots of colors. I mixed blue with several other colors of SolarFast dye on cotton, and exposed it with a photographic negative of grasses. Some SolarFast colors come out of the bottle very pale shades of the color. Others come out of the bottle with a bright yellow that will change as it is exposed to light, but will always have a yellow cast. None of the colors look like what you will get after it’s exposed to sunlight, so part of the fun is the surprise.

Two negatives were combined, one on top of the other — a vintage photo and one of a building. They were exposed with sunlight on cotton. The dark, uneven edge on the right side is where the negative didn’t cover the dye that was painted on. I especially like the edges that show how the dye was applied.

This photographic image was exposed with sunlight, after the dye was applied with a small roller. The spots at the top that are dark just around the edges were drops of dye. The sunlight couldn’t go through the thick dye, and it could only develop fully around the edge. A piece of glass was used to hold the negative tight against the cloth, and in this case, the glass had raised stripes across it that showed up in the final image.

After exposing with a negative, the cloth has to be washed very thoroughly to remove the unexposed dye from the parts of the image that were not affected by the light. Those parts sometimes show a pale cast. The dye was a mixture of blue and magenta, and left a light blue shade.

A piece of peach-colored silk with daubed with magenta-blue dye and then it was exposed with a rectangular negative (a photo of doll-house chairs) that didn’t cover all the dye.

This is also Solarfast dye, but was done with a very different method. Textured surfaces were placed underneath the fabric that already had been dyed light blue and magenta — glass platters with raised designs or, in this case, a plastic serving tray with a pattern of spirals and flowers. And then several colors of  dye were rolled on. The cloth was spread out in the sunshine for ten minutes for the dye to develop. With this technique, you don’t have to worry about washing out any unexposed dye — all the dye will be fully developed, and when you wash it, very little color should come off of it.

This piece of fabric was exposed with a glass object on top of the fabric — a glass light fixture with a heavily textured bottom. The design is darker on one side because that’s the area that got the most sunlight. (The light shade was several inches high and cast a shadow over part of the dye).

You can also make photograms by placing objects on the dye. (A similar process is “sun-printing” done with thin fabric paint.) Leaves and other plant parts, as well as flat objects, work well. The result is a silhouette, and you can make it sharper by placing a piece of glass on top to get better contact.

Two methods are combined here. First the orange dye was rolled on the fabric by placing it on top of a textured glass plate, and then the fabric was developed in sunshine. Then, since the design was blobbier than I wanted, more dye was painted on and it was exposed again through a glass plate with a spiral design. The orange was fully developed since it was only on parts of the fabric; the lavender design was made by the sunlight coming through the glass, and unexposed dye had to be washed out to make the pattern permanent.

The silk scarf was prepared with Arashi Shibori, wrapped on a PVC pipe, soaked in water, and then dyed by painting SolarFast dye on the crunched silk. The colors developed after the scarf was unwrapped and spread out in the sunlight.