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