The Science Of Textiles - Sampling Backgrounds In The Print Room

Today I was in the print room doing small A5 sized samples for backgrounds, Using different fabrics and diluted procian dye's to create a weak colourful effect. The fabric's I used was Habotai heavy silk, Habotai light silk, Muslin and cotton. These are all fabrics I would consider using for my end products which will be scarfs made for the summer month's. 
I first started by buying some A4 sized fabric...

I then started experimenting with colour, Just using dilute colour's all the colour's which are diluted here are 3 150ml cups filled with water and poured into the tubs which are supplied at college then using 5 to 8 table spoons of procian dye to make the colour which I will be using. 

After experimenting for a while which backgrounds I came out with these samples, Normally I would talk to you through how I did each sample but with them just being background samples its pretty straight forward. I just had all my colour's infront of me this included, a peachy orange, blue, green (which dried more like blue), purple and pink. I then just put my fabrics in the colour's I wanted and left them for 1 minute to dye and then squeezed out the excess water/dye. After a while I liked the colours I was using and started to double up the colours using one colour for half of my fabric and another colour for the other half. My favourite one at this point was using purple and pinky orange half and half.

The colour's I used.

I wanted to try and do some more tactile things with my samples, although they are just background samples I shall be using more tactile and many techniques for my main scarf I will be producing and this will be my main exhibition piece. The other two scarfs I will be producing will be just flat normal scarfs which will be available to buy. I decided to use batik on two of the samples I disliked the most after the wax had dried I ironed it off with an iron with paper over the top so it doe's not get wax on the iron. This really did not work as the samples I did it on where both silk and I think silk is too light of a fabric for batik as it just left an oily consistency on my sample's. 

The batik pot which I used to do my batik.

After all this experimenting I bought some more fabric, just silk and cotton and decided to do something a little differently to what I had been doing before. This was splatting the dye onto a sample which has just been soaked in a dye for 2 seconds max (this is so the dye doesnt dye it but just wets the sample so the dye which I splat onto it bleeds and makes a nice effect) I really enjoyed doing this and I really enjoy the outcome.. Here are a few pictures.

I am really excited about these samples, the colours are amazing and it makes me happy that I chose this colour scheme and topic for my fmp. I can not wait to finally get to print when my screens are exposed. 

I hope everyone likes them, If you have any feedback please comment.

Thankyou for reading!