A Dover of Ducks

Today's entry covers some experiments in putting the duck image on fabric.


It all started with this picture that I took on a bike ride out to a park near our house. The water suggested using some pole-wrapped indigo Shibori-dyed fabric that I made a while back. The traditional Shibori pattern is called Rain, as shown in the samples below.


I played with the image in Seashore. Basically turning it black and white and playing with the contrast.


From there, I traced this silhouette on my light box. This is the working image that I used for all the following transfer methods.

Method 1 : Foam Stamp


The first method involved making a foam stamp.


Some of the paint that got on the background of the stamp printed to the fabric, making the print look "dirty." I think it would have been better if the foam had been thicker, or mounted to a block of wood. This worked ok, but I wanted to experiment a little more ...

Method 2 : Freezer Paper Stencil and Fabric Paint


Next, I tried a freezer paper stencil with fabric paint.


This worked beautifully! A nice clear and sharp image. I only regret that I wasn't able to keep the beautiful curved tail feathers in the original. This is still my favorite method of this day's experimenting.

Method 3 : Citrasolv Image Transfer


Next, I printed one of the ducks on our HP Laserjet printer and used Citrasolv to transfer the toner to the fabric above. Here's a tutorial on how to do it, explained by Lyric Kinard.



This worked all right, too. The resulting image is kind of ghostly, more like The Loch Ness Monster pictures. I always have to do a practice Citrasolv transfer, because I always wind up using too much Citrasolv the first time around. With a little practice, this is also a workable method.

So there you have it, 3 methods of image transfer.