Sunday 22 January 2012

My home made printing board and painted fabrics!

During the Creative Stitches exhibition last year I was  fortunate enough to have a quick chat with Dionne Swift  at her stall and to purchase her DVD introducing the technique of devore. I haven't had a chance to experiment with this technique yet but in the DVD Dionne explains how she has prepared her work surface for printing.
Space being at a premium in our house I decided to make myself a portable printing board that can be tucked away when not in use!
I used a piece of MDF with a couple of layers of newspaper and some left over fleece fabric then covered the whole surface with heavy plastic and taped this securely on the back and edges where needed. This gives me a firm surface with a slight 'give' that is completely waterproof.

I'm really pleased with my very robust home made printing board!

 I have also been colouring some fabrics to go with my collected fabrics for chapter five. I used fabric transfer paints to colour some scraps of polyester cotton, satin, chiffon, crystal organza and muslin.
Fabric transfer paints are painted onto basic copier paper, when dry the painted paper is placed face down onto synthetic or synthetic mix fabric and then ironed to transfer the colour by heating. It is necessary to place paper underneath and on top of the fabric and painted paper in order to protect both the iron and the ironing board.
It is important to perform some test samples as the colours will look very dull and uninspiring on the paper but they are very vibrant once transferred to the fabric. It is possible to use the same paper several times, the vibrancy of the colour will reduce with each transfer giving a variety of shades. The quality of colour will also be affected by the fabric; fabric with a high synthetic content gives the best results but fabric with a natural/synthetic mix will also take the paint but may require a little longer ironing.

 
Close up of transfer printed chiffon.

You can see the subtle range of colours on the different fabrics from papers painted with colours that produced the sample swatches at the top of the picture on satin fabric.

A close up of transfer printed satin fabric.


 I referred back to my colour mixing notes when mixing the transfer paints; because the colour of the paint is so different from the colours resulting from transfer they are more difficult to mix but I am very pleased with the colours I have achieved.

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