Experiment with discharge printing

Another experiment from today, printing with discharge on to some cotton I had bought. This worked well until there was some mishap. It was all fine when it came out of the heat press, so I can only imagine the discolouration happened whilst washing it afterwards. You can just about see where there are some lighter patches which seem to be part of the design. So I don't know what happened there. Perhaps it can be covered up with some sort of embroidery or something.

Experiment with flock

An experiment from today with pigment and flock on to cotton. The colours are not too accurate in these images as the cotton is a much darker blue. I would have liked to print the heads using proceon dyes but wasn't able to due to the steamer being broken. So I settled with using pigment. The flock came out really well on the ferns.

more ferns and faces

And today I found some left over heavy brushed cotton from ages ago. So I thought I would print the Ferns and Faces design on to it and see how it turned out. I had this green colour already mixed up and wasn't too keen on it. However the colour worked quite well with the natural tone of the cotton. As expected, some of the print lies on top of some of the fibres on the fabric making it quite fragile. This is something I really like and I think it works well in relation to the passing of time as the image would change as it got more worn. You also get an embossed texture to the image where larger area of colour (the hair) go deeper into the fabric and the areas around these become raised.

Quilted cotton.

At last I had some time today to take some pictures of what I have been working on for a while now. This piece is printed on cotton that I dyed a light grey. I then backed it with a piece of fleece and quilted it. The initial idea with this (and subsequent pieces) was to create an item that provided some form of comfort, perhaps a cushion cover even? I am trying to think of what to do, though, and how best such an item would be exhibited. For now I am leaving it as it is, and I am just going to try and get as much printed as possible while I have access to the college facilities.

screen print on cotton

I also finally got a three layer print done recently that I have been working on steadily for a while (with little urgency!). But it's finally something I can experiment with. I went for some brighter colours just as a random trial really on some small samples. The last image is pretty poor as it was taken with rare sunlight streaming in.