I decided to move to bigger pieces of fabric and in doing so, needed a bigger preparation area to apply the chemicals. My kitchen table is a raw piece of wood which I had a glass sheet made for the top. I figured this would be the perfect spot to lay everything once it was done and then put the glass sheet over the top.

It’s difficult to create absolute darkness in my apartment. I have very few rooms and the only room that is practical enough to lay out chemically saturated fabric to dry in the darkest place possible, is in fact my kitchen.

The best I can do each time, is close my blinds, close all the ajoining doors and keep the lights down low. Unfortunately I didn’t factor in that the fabric was longer than my table length and that light would seep through the cracks. So, by the time I returned home to check it was dry, it had partly developed..oh dear.

Anyway, I was excited to create a collage effect from selected materials I had gathered along the Wainwrights, along with some negatives.

I decided to roll with it, rather than waste it. I was worried that the light wouldn’t quite reach the table top, despite opening up the window fully and my suspicion was correct unfortunately. When I came to process it in the rinse, it hadn’t really taken. I could make out certain parts but not enough that I was happy with it.

I left it a day or so while I considered my options, then realised if I move everything off the desk in the window where I have been developing some of my smaller pieces and measure the area of the desk top, I could make sure the fabric was within the area and lay it directly in the sun..

I even decided to include the Loughrigg glove!

Typically, it was a little overcast, so I left it a bit longer overall then prepared the sink adjacent to the desk ready to transfer the fabric for rinsing. I put a drop of peroxide in to spead up the oxidisation and this could be seen immediately.

As I rinsed and squeezed the fabric between my hands, I let out a little smile and sigh of relief. It seemed to have worked. Now all I had to do was hang it up to dry and wait a little.