I'm dyeing!

I'm sun dyeing again. Here is a blog showing the process: LuAnn Kessi's Blog

In my last dyeing experiment, I laser printed an image onto an overhead projector, acetate slide, and pinned it to my fabric. I was hoping the printed image would mask the sun, but the slide itself would let the sunlight through. In fact the slide masked the sun, and created a very crisp rectangle, as the paint pooled a little around the edges. The vinyl also gave a very crisp image, but it is hard to reuse the vinly, since it rolls up and sticks to itself when you peel it off. So I thought I'd try making some stencils out of acetate, which I can rinse off and reuse.

I drew some diatoms (What's a diatom? Artist Ernst Haeckel) using Adobe Illustrator, and cut them out of acetate using my plotter cutter. They are now sitting in the sun, and I'm writing this entry partly to keep myself from watching the paint dry. Here's an image of my stencils.

I hope it works! One great thing about the plotter cutter is that I can always cut the images out of vinyl, which I know will work for sun dying, so there will certainly be some diatom fabric in my future.