Lasting social mementos created with imagination and recycled sailcloth
Issue 118: Jan/Feb 2018
It wasn’t until my partner, Jim, and I made our first trip to Mexico on our Outbound 46 that I was introduced to boat cards. Most cards feature a lovely photo or graphic of the boat or its owners along with names and contact information. In the cruising community, they’re commonly exchanged and are a good way of remembering the names of the people you met last month who are anchored next to you this morning. So many sailing interactions are transient, and cards make it easy to exchange information we’d be otherwise scratching on napkins or entering into our phones.
I’m a visual artist specializing in textiles, and I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with the standard photo-on-card-stock approach. Some retired small-boat sails had recently found their way into my studio, and I began thinking about making our cards out of sailcloth. The fabric is durable, water resistant, and thematic, and repurposing the old sails appealed to the recycler in me. But would ink stick to that tough, slick cloth? I had to try.
First, I stretched a large piece cut from a sailing dinghy’s old jib (approximately 3-ounce white sailcloth) over a 4 x 8-foot metal frame. Then, using a selection of décor fabric paints in red and yellow hues, I mixed an intense sunset-orange color. Orange fits with our boat’s name, Bright Moments, and matches our cabin interior. Watering down the paint to the consistency of dye encouraged the fabric to absorb the color.
To reflect the infinite ways in which the sailing life can be embraced, I wanted each card to be a little different. I applied the dye with a large brush and pushed it around on the slippery fabric surface with a water-soaked second brush to create variations in color saturation. While the surface was still wet, I sprinkled it randomly with coarse pickling salt. The large salt crystals drew in the moisture around them, creating an organic stippled look and adding another layer of thematic connection.
After a couple of days, everything was dry enough for me to shake off the salt. I ironed the cloth at the medium setting for three minutes per each 18-inch-square area to heat-set the color. In the meantime, I typed my boat-card text on the computer in the standard business-card format, 10 to a page. When the fabric was ready, I cut it into 81⁄2 x 11-inch sheets.
Fingers crossed, it was time to print. Using a glue stick along just the leading edges, I glued each hand-dyed fabric page to a standard letter-sized sheet of copy paper, then trimmed off all the loose threads. These steps helped the fabric pages run through my old HP inkjet printer without jamming. I hand-fed each sheet, and the printer successfully printed the text directly onto the dyed fabric. I removed the paper backing from the fabric sheets before the glue had a chance to set. Once the ink was dry, I cut out the individual cards using a hot soldering iron, which left crisp non-fraying edges.
We’ve been giving out these cards for seven years and are gratified whenever someone stops to enjoy the silky feel of the cloth between their fingers. Our bright boat cards are tactile reminders, not only of our names and email address, but of Bright Moments herself and the people who sail her with resourcefulness, creativity, and attention to little things that have big meanings.
Linda Hawke is a visual artist who discovered sailing in the unlikely city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She lives aboard Bright Moments with her significant other, Jim. They are currently cruising in the South Pacific.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
