My previous attempt at an anthotype on felted wool is still outside baking away in the scoring Southern sun. It's been out there for 48 days now. I checked it a while back, but the condition remains basically the same. At 60 days I'm going to pull it and give up. Two months is more than enough time for any reasonable exposure. Anything past that falls into "unreasonable" territory and just gets written off. We'll see what it looks like by then.
Still, I went into that experiment knowing that madder root was a fairly strong textiles dye and it had good notes about its light-fastness and resistance to fading. I've confirmed in previous paper experiments that even extended exposures with madder root don't give great contrast. So whatever the failings of madder root on woolen felt, I don't think they necessarily invalidate the idea of felt. I like the concept behind it: making the substrate myself from raw fibers, dyeing them myself with my own pigments and then performing the exposure myself and doing any post-processing work necessary. So all that is pretty cool.
Today I started a new felt anthotype, this one dyed with turmeric and annatto powder (2:1 ratio, diluted in ~500 ml of alcohol) which I know to be a fast-exposing mixture. I also didn't let the felt soak in the dye as long. It still has a nice, strong yellow-gold color, but it isn't fully saturated the way the madder felt was. I left the madder felt to soak for two days, this felt only soaked for about two or three hours. So, I'm hoping some portions of the felt might bleach away totally and leave me a nice strong image. I don't expect a lot of detail in a felt exposure, but we'll see what we get! I'll be checking it once a week. I'm hoping to have results in 2-3 weeks, but I'll go for up to a month if I need to.
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