In December Richard and I had an opportunity to participate in an artisan market day, and that gave me a chance to think about some projects besides the children’s quilts I make for Project Linus each month. I had experimented a bit with cyanotypes on fabric a few years ago and always intended to try it again, so here was the perfect excuse.
Cyanotypes or sunprints use sunlight to imprint an image onto properly treated paper or fabric. For my first project back in 2020 I had some small ferns that I exposed onto pre-treated fabric and incorporated into this miniature hanging. It was hand-pieced and quilted, embellished with ruched flowers and beads, and mounted on a 12×12″ stretched canvas.
Since then I have been collecting and drying all kinds of natural materials during our summer travels. This fall I tried out various grasses, ferns and flower heads on cyanotype fabric squares and made five miniature hangings. The first one, “Grasses with Quail,” uses grass stems with seed heads to make a background for a hand-appliqued and embroidered quail. The pretreated fabric came in 8-1/2″ squares so I added a hand-quilted border in order to mount the embellished print on a 12×12″ stretched canvas.
On these two squares I exposed broader leaved grasses to create the impression of tall reeds in miniature scenes. “Reeds with Great Egret” has a hand-appliqued and embellished bird, sashiko embroidery, and a piece of dried grass. “Reeds with Butterflies” has hand-appliqued butterflies, sashiko embroidery, and some dried Queen Anne’s Lace flower heads. Both are enlarged with 2″ borders to fit inside 12×12″ frames that also hold the dried materials in place.
My favorite sunprint subjects are ferns. “Ferns with Snail” uses embroidery to embellish the fern imprint and includes an appliqued snail and embroidered stalks, mounted in an 8″ hoop. “Ferns with Lady’s Slipper” has similar ferns as a backdrop to the hand-appliqued orchid. Hand quilting along the midribs of the individual pinnae gives the ferns added dimension.
All five of these hangings were displayed at our Spingarn Studio table in the December artisan show, and I was really pleased that two of them went to new homes. I still have quite a collection of dried ferns in different sizes and patterns, not to mention leaves, seeds, and evergreen needles. So I am looking forward to using the New Mexico sun to make more cyanotype nature blocks this year.
You can enlarge each image and use the magnifying glass tool for a closer look.