Leaves, Beads and Butterflies

Had a busy couple of weeks. It started off with leaves for my vines and embroidering vast amounts of them before some were beaded. Had a bit of a nightmare when some of the tiny purple beads wouldn't fit over my needle but I got a real beading needle which has been a great help.

I then spent a few days in the print room hand painting a few butterflies (so I didn't get too bored of leaves) before they were embroidered and shaped for my back-lace...

I've been using some gorgeous silk organza, silk chiffon and crepe de chine for the butterflies, just need to find something that will shape them nicely.

 

#butterflies #leaves #beads #embroidery #print

Dry Point Etching

We had a few really fun workshops at Uni today in different printing techniques. We did dry point etching and Collagraphs.

The dry point etching was really fun having to scratch out all the areas we wanted printing and getting messy with the oil paint. We have our own printing press from 1835 that we use to actually print with and had great fun creating enough pressure to make the print work. I was quite pleased with how mine turned out and would like to try some more of it.

We didn't finish the collagraphs as the last part of the process was to coat everything with PVA to make it more durable to print with but it was great fun sticking loads of stuff down and getting covered in glue and paint!

There are loads of pictures of this workshop on our degree show Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TSDDegreeshow2014 and you can keep up to date with all our work and preparation for the final show!

#printing #etching #collagraph #facebook #degreeshow

The One Ring...

Had another fun jewellery making lesson the other day, we made rings...


I shut my self up in the print room all day today for a feather day but I got a bit excited and did some leaves and flowers too...

I had to use Helens desk though, mine was a bit of a mess

 #ring #printing #feathers #flowers #leaves

Flower Power!

Had a fun day making flowers. I dont want to jinx anything but it all actually worked, my pull throughs didn't run everywhere, my dyes all turned out nice colours and making the flowers didn't make me want to cry!

This is my blue jay flower, just made from cotton, I was supposed to embroider the black on but I  got too excited and was half way through sewing it together when I remembered!

Silk Fuchsia, it needs its stamens etc cos it does look like it's missing something

 Organza butterfly flower, possibly my favourite! (yes that is a roll of double sided sticky tape holding it in place, it kept falling over haha)

 Silk peacock flower, this just needs shaping a bit better

#silk #organza #cotton #butterfly #flower #fuchsia #dyeing #printing

Fingers crossed it works this time!

Been doing more pull throughs (I checked and turns out I did use the wrong fixative, oops) so have re-done my samples from the other day and, hopefully, they'll work this time...

I did some new samples too, they're not finished but you get a cookie if you can tell what they're going to be

#printing #sewing #embroidery #leaves #flowers #feathers

Stitch and Print

Had an interesting week. I've been experimenting with how to make my neckpiece out of fabric and what bits are good to print/embroider etc.
We learnt about pull throughs which is a print technique where you paint dye onto the screen then pull the paste through instead of mixing it all together. I did actually quite enjoy it and it gives a really nice soft effect and tried it for feathers and petals...

Ooh, how pretty and colourful! But then it gets washed and steamed and this happened

It all washed out! Not entirely sure why, probably didn't use the right fixative/the paste was off/didn't steam properly so I will try again and hopefully it will work cos I really would like to use it.

To cheer myself up after I did a bit of sewing for some leaves. They worked nicely and didn't go wrong at the last minute.

 I'd used a water soluble fabric with the leaves so when I washed it away they went a bit gluey and sticky (I've been covered in glue all day after cutting them out lol) but I can shape them and they can look all leafy

#printing #embroidery #pull through #leaves #feathers

Devoré

Got some more print samples for you, wooh.

These are Devoré samples - you print onto the back of the fabric, iron it on the back till it goes golden brown (like chips :) ) then wash it out and where the Devoré paste touches the fabric it burns some of the fabic away and it goes all nice and see through-y!

The top one is Devoré velvet and the bottom one is satin. It hasn't worked so well in some places and I think its cos not enough pressure/paste was applied but you get the idea. If it's done properly it looks so cool!

Advanced Print Stuff

Had an exciting Monday, we learnt lots of new things about printing and did a million and one samples of them.
We did...
Varying strengths of Discharge paste (strongest at the top)

(This is varying strengths of discharge on silk that's been dyed with a DS acid green and an IL acid purple. The IL acid doesn't discharge out so the green gets removed to leave the purple)

Flocking - this is all furry and nice :)

Pigment discharge and Illuminating discharge - the yellow is pigment discharge where the discharge removes the colour to leave the yellow, the white is the illuminating discharge where the same thing happens

We also did metallics and pearls but they didn't turn out so well - they were quite pale colours on white and quite hard to see so the photograph didn't look like anything.
I'm actually quite excited to start playing with them, I really want to use the flocking for something but I dont think furry fish will work somehow...

Hi Lucy!

Got a request for a better explanation of how I made my cushions and printing in general for Lucy :)

First off you have to make a Koda Trace - this is a drawing on special Koda Trace paper and has to completely block the light out so usually takes ages checking that it's opaque and doesn't get smudged. If you want to print more than one colour you have to make a Koda Trace for each colour cos you can only print one colour per Koda Trace.

Then you take your screen and have to coat it with some special purple emulsion that's light sensitive and when it's dry you tape your Koda Trace to it - making sure it's the right way round for printing - and expose it to the light and where the light hits the paint it hardens and where your Koda Trace is the paint stays soft and washes off, leaving parts of the screen clear to print through!

To actually print, you pin your fabric to the backing cloth on the fancy print table we have so it doesn't move when you're printing on it, place your screen in the right place over the fabric with a line of paste at the top and pull your squeegee with the paste over the bit that you want to print. Depending on how thick/heavy the fabric is you need to pull the paste over it more - silk only needs one or 2 pulls but a heavy cotton would need 4/5.

There are different pastes too - this is getting a bit confusing - there are dye pastes that actually dye the fabric so the fabric still flows how it should, and pigment ones that just sit on top of the fabric so if it was on a light fabric like a silk it wouldn't flow the same. I like the dye pastes for that reason, cos I really like using silk :) The pigment ones are quite funky too cos there are loads of special ones that expand when you iron them and are all 3D!

On my cushions and tea towel I printed the black outlines in pigment (not the cool 3D stuff sadly) and when it had dried I painted the colour into it with the dye pastes.

Then it all needs fixing so the colour doesn't run when it's washed - pigment (my black stuff) just needs ironing on the back for a few mins which is really nice and quick but the dye paste (my colour) needs to go in this big scary steamer which everyone makes me open and close cos the think they're gonna fall in it! Anyway, the dye pastes need to be steamed for about half an hour then rinsed so the excess colour comes out - that scares me more than the steamer cos I always worry that ALL the colour will come out or it'll dye the rest of the fabric around it and turn it funny colours and other horrors but its usually fine.

When every thing's been fixed they just need to be sewn - the sewing's pretty easy but the measuring so every thing's in the right place is fiddly. The tea towel is easiest cos that's just had all the edges folded and sewn. The cushion has the edges sewn then is folded with the right sides together - this is the fiddly bit cos you need to measure everything so it's the right size - it's folded differently depending on where you want the back seam  -and then sewn down the edges to finish it. To FINISH finish it it needs ironing so it's all uncreased and beautiful and looks like the ones I made :)

Hope that was helpful, I know there's looooads of info there - we had about 2 weeks to learn all that and I've just chucked it at you in one lol. Its probably way more info than you needed but I wanted to explain everything properly. If I haven't explained something enough or have actually missed something out let me know and I'll add in.
xx

It's Cushion Time :)

Had another exciting day where I made a cushion! (and stabbed my finger with some broken glass but we're not focusing on that bit)Here it is...

For some reason this one looks quite yellow - the colour's more accurate on the top one - but I'm still very excited.
They've been screen printed with black pigment then I hand painted all the colour in with dye pastes in fab colours.

Now all I need are some little silver safety pins to attach my swing tags and it's all good. I actually need to make some more swing tags but that's beside the point

Anyone for Tea?

Had a fun day printing and look what happened!

I made a tea towel!

I'm now taking orders if anyone wants one :)

Samples (that have gone right)

Well, I've finally sorted the sample fiasco - spent all yesterday in college printing and painting and what not and this is the result...

This one is various colours on cotton sateen

...on cotton sateen again

Same but on silk

and calico

I was so scared when I washed them incase they bled everywhere again but I had remembered to mix the colours into a paste this time so it wasn't going to. Phew!

While I was waiting for them to finish in the steamer I had a bit of a play with some other prints I'd done on calico...

They're to put your wigs in :p

Changed my mind, hate it again.

See, I'm just too fickle for this course.

Well, I've spent the last 2 days in the print room being a good girl and printing some samples on fabric and carefully hand painting them so they looked beautiful and I showed my tutor and she told me to steam, wash and iron them so they were fixed and I did and look what happened...

This one isn't too bad - just a few green spots everywhere so I might be able to salvage that but it gets worse...

 The entire background of this one has gone from very white to pink with a hint of purple and blue

I think this one kind of speaks for itsself.

Turns out that if you dont mix the dyes with manutex or indalca they do that when they've been steamed and washed.
If I'm honest I'm glad I found out that it happens now and can do something about it than it happening on my final piece and not knowing what to do. Although, I'd rather it didn't actually do that but if it has to...

Playing in Printing Cushions

Before we broke up for this lovely Easter break we had an afternoon playing at making more designs for our cushions and teatowels. These are my 2 fave's from then mainly because I think I have a slight obsession with the colourful wigs.

Dun dun duuuuuunnnn.....

Final collections are all complete! WOOH! I've spent most of the day in the print room, freezing, gluing stuff to foil so I can finish them...

Anyways, here are my Embroidery ones:

These were done on cotton sateen (apart from the first one, that was some kind of wool that wasn't very nice to use) and have been done using various hand and machine stitches as well as some applique and dyeing.

And my printed ones:

These were done on habotai silk and cotton sateen using various procion and acid pastes, discharge pastes, pigments and some foiling. (The first 4 are silk and just look so nice, I think I have a slight obsession with silk - I did loads of work in AS Level with it too)

 

 I know they're a bit small but I think if you click them they get bigger and you can have a proper look. If they dont and you really want to see some more detail then just say and I can put them up big!

Bzzzzzz Bzzz Bzzzz

^^Thats cos I've been a busy little bee :) I did another 2 prints - one on silk and one on cotton! One... well, one went quite wrong cos I didn't make the dye paste dark enough so it hasn't printed but I'm gonna go over it tomorrow and the other one is this! I quite like it...

The fabric dyed with this gorgeous texture where the dye had gone a bit weird (not sure why) but it needed leaves on it to go with the effect. I used procions and acids in blues and purples printed onto silk. I'm also going to pick out some areas in irridescent and blue foils so I'm quite excited about that!

First final print!

And, I've done a print for my final collection! How organised am I :)  (I'm just not mentioning that some people have got loads more prints done that I think look better so shhhh) All the fabrics I dyed today came out really pale so I've decided that can be my theme and if we had to name our collections my print one would be 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' cos the colours are all blues/purples and they look all dream-like.

This one turned out so much paler that I thought it would and my camera - awesome though it is - couldn't focus on it cos everything was so pale! So I've just got a few close ups to give you the general impression. I dyed the fabric Bright Blue (but it came out pale purple...?) and printed with discharge, steamed it to fix, then printed with blue procion paste and steamed to fix. And somehow I was at college till 9pm doing this... Not entirely sure how it took about 8 hours but still, I quite like it :)