Chemical Reaction

I’ve blogged before about how much I love research. This week I learned about cyanotypes. What fun!

I talked to Linda Stemer, owner of Blueprintsonfabric.com. She treats fabric, silks and cottons, with chemicals (potassium ferricyanide and ferric salt, if you must know) so that a reaction will occur when exposed to sunlight. This is an old process,discovered right about the same time as photography. It’s how architectural blueprints were made before giant copy machines were around.

Check out Linda’s website and poke around. Especially interesting is her link to the NY Public Library and the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins, the first woman photographer. Using images from nature, she made hundreds of prints. The ghostly images over a century and a half old are haunting.

Of course when I heard of this process, I start thinking of ways to use it in a Quilting Mystery novel. My experiments and my talk with Linda had my mind buzzing. You will have to wait until the publication of Ocean Waves, however to find out how blueprinting helps Dewey solve a mystery.

Here’s a photographic journey of the process.


This is what the treated fabric looks like. Kind of a pretty green.



Place your object on the cloth. I used a doily and some balsa palm trees. Put in the sun. I did this toward the end of the day and still got great results. Summer in California, you gotta to love it. Except for the smoke and the drought, of course.




After a ten-fifteen minutes, take to sink and rinse until water runs clear. I never photographed running water before and did this by accident. Very artsy!



Let dry flat. Ta-da!