Light Sensitive Dying 1

As it was a nice, sunny day today, I decided to use my newly brought light sensitive dye. This dye is LUMI light sensitive dye which is a dye that is applied to fabric and changes colour when placed in the sunlight.

This was my first attempt at using the dye and was quite a time consuming process, but I did learn quite a lot. I used two different types of stencil to block the light and create a design onto the fabric, some leaves and some images I had printed onto acetate from the computer.

The leaves worked better as a print rather than the images. I think this is because I did not stick the acetate down enough, so the sunlight went under the stencil not creating a contrasting enough colour difference between the dye and the image. This was too the problem with the leaves, but not to the same extent. Next time I try it again, I must fix the blocks better to the fabric to give a sharper image.

As well as this, next time I need to be more careful in my choice of background fabric. The white cotton worked ok, but I wanted to experiment a little further with colours and patterns in the background. This is because I only have the red dye, as it was quite expensive, so I thought that if I used a different background fabric it might change the appearance of the dyes.

I THINK THIS IS AN INTERESTING TECHNIQUE WHICH I DEFINITELY WANT TO TAKE FURTHER - I MUST EXPERIMENT FURTHER.