Getting Back To My Roots....Fabric Printing

I have decided to do a few tutorials, because I am still working, just not talking too much

I was taking the piss out of my darling Kelly a few weeks ago, Me and Indi were watching him at work, coiling miles of smelly fishy rope into bags to go back out onto the mussell farm.  "and this is why we get an education!" I laughed to my munchy and as we drove home I started to think about my education, and how I didnt use mine at all so what was I talking about!!

So here is my education, I studied screen printing and fashion design and decided to do what I know well again.  Its not all about screens with printing, so here are a few ideas for you to try.

All we need for big fabric runs is a bit of cardboard really, acetate or baking paper, pencil, felt and a hot glue gun.

Draw your design in pencil on your card, my card has a shiny side so the paint will wipe off a bit easier and not absorb.  Use your acetate to trace the edge design on the right.

bring it over to the left and see how its going to overlap, you can see where bits of my design will clash, so using this method going back and forth you can get the edge of the stamp so it links better and wont have a box stamp feel when printed, more inter locking. (and I said I wasent up for talking!)

fine tuning the design.

and do the same for the top and bottom.  The big spaces with no design will usually come out as a block colour so try to make your design lines cover all the space on your page, you will see.

Steady hands and lots of glue, hot glue gun over your lines as nicely as possible but dont stress over it, fabric is very forgiving to lumpy stamps.

So it looks like this!.

and this!

mix up your heat set colour.  If you dont want to buy heat set you dont have to, to have a huge range of colours just use house paint test pots, water soluble house paint is beautiful to use and as we know once it dries on fabric, it aint going no where, so use test pots too.

choose your fabric, this is so cheap I was gonna throw it, lucky I have crafty hoarding tendencies.

use another piece of card or board covered with cling film lunch wrap and paint on a layer of your paint, thick enuf for the stamp to pick up but not thick enuf to drown it.

press on stamp, give a good rub and peel up.

press down on fabric.

Voila! now remember how much your over lap was and just keep going, re loading every time you stamp. I went four across to make a line and then another line on top.  The table I print on is made of wood and carpet underlay so its spongy but you can just lay down some sheets to get a padded layed or better yet do it on the carpet on your floor with a sheet over for cleanliness

all printed in about 15 mins

now I hand paint in the stars with gold

and some dots on the swirls

and that is how you make printed fabric that is a one off.

but not so one off that you cant use your stamp again, let it dry and you should be able to use it for quite a while...see where I left too bigger gaps in the design and the stamp picks up blocks of paint, depends if you mind or not

so I made a quick pattern off one of munchys other tops and thrashed together some long sleeved numbers for her, too easy!

Im putting up the second post now too. hope this inspires some of you!
and you can also use this way to make designs for t shirts too, not just runs of fabric, or table cloths, endless things really..


xxx
Sheree