Sunprint Fun - Michelle's Quilt

I've always been intrigued with the Sunprint (more formally known as cyanotype) technique, particularly on fabric. This quilt is one I made for my niece; it incorporates squares that I "sun printed" with elements from the border fabric.

Sunprint Quilt

A few years ago, I received a gift of fabric squares in a variety of bright colors.  They were ordered from this online Cyanotype Store.  The fabric is treated with a chemical that, when exposed to UV light, dyes the fabric blue. The trick is to place an object on the fabric so that the area around the object will be dyed blue. 

Here is what the variety of squares I "sun printed" looked like after completing the process. I chose to leave out the orange squares because the blue dyed the fabric a brownish-green color that didn't work well in the quilt.  I'll use them for something else.

Sunprint Squares

In addition to the age-appropriate theme, I chose the border fabric because the color scheme matched the colored squares I received. I could also see that there were many elements in the print that I could use to do the "sun printing" on the squares.

Border Fabric

I scanned the border print into my computer and enlarged it until the elements I wanted to use were an appropriate size for the fabric squares.  Then I cut them out, including any details inside the element. Some of the items ended up being in multiple pieces, like the frog where the head is separate from the body, and the sun, where the outer ring is separate from the inner.

To keep the paper pieces from moving, I used a hard surface (like a kitchen cutting board) to lay the fabric squares on, then placed the paper pieces down, and finally added a piece of plain glass on top. This has to go pretty quickly because any exposure to UV light will start to dye the fabric.  It only takes 8-10 minutes in the sun for the process to be complete, then you run the fabric under water to remove the chemicals, and you'll start to see the dye process take affect as it dries.  I started off by doing just one as a test, then on subsequent batches I did more at one time.

I enjoyed doing this and thinking of other applications.  I will say that the white fabric is probably the one that I would like the best, so I do want to do this again with an eye on that blue and white theme.

Finally, for the quilt construction, I looked for a quilt square pattern that incorporated a large center square.  After that it was about color placement and assembly.  While most of the quilting was "stitch in the ditch" around the grid, I did take the opportunity to practice my free motion quilting around the sun-print shapes and throughout the border.  I like how it turned out and know that Michelle enjoyed receiving this quilt as a keepsake.

Things I learned during this project:

• Sun Printing, of course.  This was fun and I learned some interesting things about the process.
• I rushed the application of the lime green binding, and I'm not pleased with how it ended up.  I'll take my time in the future to make it a better finish.