A Day In The Life - #3

Today's day in the life blog post consists of me dying up fabric, washing and pressing my fabric, Helping out my friend print onto her fabric and needle felting so keep reading if you want to see and read in more detail what I did.
Up and out early this Monday morning, 9AM start at college, I started off this morning by dying the fabric that was the off cuts from my big exhibition scarf, as they are different sizes they shall just be little bits of fabric for headscarfs or what ever people would want them to be, waste not want not, I'm not one to chuck fabric out. 

This length of fabric in the picture above is one of the off cuts from my previous pieces of fabric, I found this wasent long enough for a scarf so I dyed it some bright colour's to use maybe as a headscarf. After I had dyed this and put it to dry, The colour's left behind on the printing table were so so amazing...

I decided to use another piece of cut off fabric to lay on top of this dye, To see how the fabric would pick up the colours and see what it would look like.

After just one press on the dye this is what the fabric looked like, I really think it looks really good, I put this fabric to one side and used it after I had dyed some fabric, each time I would lay this fabric on the left over dye on the print table. After I was happy with the outcome I pressed and washed it and used it as a headscarf for my own personal use as it was not suitable for anything else.

Excuse the mirror selfie, the apron and the sweaty face but this is what the final outcome of my improvised head scarf looked like, I am going to keep this for my self as I would make it neater and longer if I was to sell it but I personally like it how it is.

After I had cleaned up my space on the table I had a think of what I could dye up next and decided to go with silk scarfs, As I will be selling some scarfs some people will not want crazy wacky colours therefore I shall print some on just white backgrounds and some on block colour backgrounds. After cutting my silk scarfs out I filled 2 buckets with water and measured out some procian dye mixing them to make lighter or darker shades and testing the colours with little silk swatches. I left my silk in the buckets (each had their own bucket as they are different colours) and left them in there untill the end of the day when Kathryn will take them out and place them on the table to dry over night. 

After I had done all this I helped my friend Thea who's blog you can find here. To print one of her fabrics up. I have never used the registration bar to screen print, tomorrow I shall be using it to print my own fabric up. Today I used it for the first time to help Thea print her fabric up and I was so amazed at how easy and quick it is, It will really help me with time management to get my final pieces printed before the exhibition. Here are a few pictures of me and Thea printing her fabric up...

After we had finished printing this fabric up I still had an hour left of college, I decided to dye up one more piece of fabric, Muslin this time, Using orange,Yellow and Pink colour's. 

This was really simple to do, I just wet my fabric by painting on water then splatted the dye on the fabric with paint brushes. It leaves such a lovely effect when the fabric is lifted off the table. After doing this I then pressed and washed all my fabric I had dyed that day. Early this morning I also pressed and washed my big exhibition scarf by using the heat press then putting it on a quick rinse in the washing machine. 

When I got home I decided to do some needle felting as Iv still a lot to do and I figured an hour or so a day will make it easier than letting it all build up. I did a few more bacterial petri dish needle felts and created some little needle felts which I would describe to look like looking down a microscope, These shall be attached to plain rings by the hot glue gun to sell in my exhibition, I am still trying to perfect these as I shall be making a lot of them for my exhibition. Here are a few photo's from today's needle felting session.

The needle feltings which are to sew onto my scarf I am not creating them as detailed and creative as the first ones I did as they will not be shown close up and I am trying to manage my time well, Although the ones which will be in the petri dishes are really beautiful to look at.

Tomorrow's blog post will hopefully be showing you how I printed up my big exhibition scarf as well as the fabric I have dyed today. And some more needle felting. So keep your eyes peeled!!

Thankyou all for reading! Come back tomorrow x

A Day In The Life - Dying Up Fabric

Today's blog post is a new series of blog posts which will lead up to my exhibition, Everyday I shall post 'A Day In The Life' which will give you an insight in my life every day up until the big exhibition day! Today's day in the life consists of new Tumblr posts and dying up my fabric for my big exhibition piece scarf... enjoy!

This morning I had a thought to my self, I decided that as my final major project is now over and all is left is to print my exhibition piece's, So I decided to make my tumblr blog a little more personal and not completely textile's based, This means I shall be posting non textiles post's and using it for inspiration for fashion and other things not just textiles. With this in mind I decided to change my URL from tthreadsforthought to threadsanddaisies.

Above is a little snippet of what my tumblr will be like from now on but don't be worried I shall still be posting many textiles based things. Follow me at threadsanddaisies 

This afternoon I went to use the print room to dye my fabric for my big exhibition piece scarf, The fabric I am using for this is white musin and it is the length of the big printing table in our print room which is 4.5 meter long. I had already kept my procian dye's from my samples so I was all set. The only problem I experienced at first was how I would wet that amount of fabric as I like to wet my fabric then splodge the dye onto it so it bleeds and smudges and gives an Klari Reis (artist) effect on my material. Soaking it in a bucket would mean a lot of water which would be a safety issue so I decided to paint the water on my fabric. I had help with this from the print room instructor Kathryn, She painted water onto my fabric while I followed her splodging the dye onto my fabric. I used the sample colours as I did my samples but instead of keeping them all at a strong colour I made a diluted version of them aswell. Here are a few photo's from today's print room activities...

These picture's above show me cutting the fabric, I cut it to the length of the table then cut it down a little bit so it was just the width of my print. I then got some water ready and started painting on my water then Kathryn took over as I followed her with dye.

As you can see here I used the dye's to dye the fabric by moving around the table doing one side at a time, I tried to equalize the colours out too. To put the dye on the fabric I used different methods such as just tapping it onto the fabric, flicking it and splodging it onto the fabric. This might seem like a bunch of made up words but if you've ever painted or anything like that you will understand what I mean. I also tried leaving a a few white part's as I did not want it all to be covered. 

As you can see on this picture I layered up the dyes putting one on at a time, Being careful of what colours I put on top of what as they can mix and make different colour's, This did work in my favour as I created beautiful purples and greens. 

 This is the finished outcome in the picture above. I am really happy to how it has come out. Although when it has been pressed and washed it will look more faded and blurred but this will prepare my fabric to be printed on to. I have really enjoyed doing this and I am glad I am making progress for my exhibition. 

After today I had a chat with Kathryn (Instuctor) and she said to make my money back from my fmp I should make lot's of things and sell them, such as earings and rings with my needle felted (smaller) creations on. So i've hopped on ebay and bought some plain rings and earings for jewelry making and tomorrow will be filled with all sorts of needle felting fun which I shall blog about in tomorrows 'A Day In The Life' blog post.

I hope you enjoyed reading my first a day in the life, I hope you have all had a lovely day. Come back tomorrow!!

Needle Felted Petri Dishes - Tactile Sampling

It has been decided that my main scarf I shall be making which will be purely for my exhibition will be as tactile as can be. Taking this into consideration I had an idea of sewing some needle felted creations onto samples I had already created to see how it would hold and look like. I took one of the needle felted petri dishes I made a few week back and hand sewn it onto a silk printed sample. 

This is what the outcome looks like. I really really like it and I shall make some more of these petri dishes enough to put out for my exhibition and to sew onto my scarf. I hope you all like it and if you have any other ideas for my exhibition please comment! 
Thankyou for reading x

Screen Printing In The Print Room - The Science Of Textiles.

Today has been the long awaited day! Finally screen printing in the print room! Although my 4th screen is not ready it already looks amazing without it. I shall show you step by step what I did today in the print room! I dyed some A4 sized fabric mostly light silk but also some cotton and muslin. I used the same colour's and techniques as I did for my background colour samples (the one's on the A5 sized fabric) I like the idea that every sample will be slightly different as the techniques I used would be impossible to try get every sample the same.

After dying my fabric's and leaving them to dry I then used masking tape to stick them down to the printing table, I did this so that when I print on them they do not move or stick to the screen when I lift it up. 

After I had masking taped four samples to the printing table It was time to print my first screen. The reason I did four samples at once is because my screens are so big, This is a bonus for me because I can do four samples at a time which saves me time. The first screen is the pink screen. Mixing my colour's was difficult as I needed to mix a pink which wasn't a neon pink but wasn't a really light pastel pink, It had to be somewhere in the middle and it needed to mix well with blue to make a nice purple as the blue screen would go on top of some of the pink. 

I managed to make the perfect pink which would show up on all the samples even the ones with a lot of pink in the background. I did this using Brill pink 5BTL and Orange pigment's.

I made this blue colour with Blue B and Turquoise 4G pigment's. This blue really compliments the pink I mixed as well as mixed well to make a lovely purple colour.

Now was time to print...

First the pink screen...

I really liked how this came out, Its really excited to see my work coming to life and me being in control of it. I was a little concerned at this point that it looked a little bit flat though. The next step was to add the blue screen and see how that looks...

This is the first finished set of sample's. As you can see I have printed the blue screen which has created purple also and I have printed the dark green screen. The screen which is currently not exposed is the light green which is placed behind the dark green, I shall do some samples with this screen at a later date although I really like it without it at the moment. I am very happy with how these samples came out and how the colour's have taken to the fabric's. The next step I did was taking the rest of my samples I had dyed the background's of and masking taped them to the printing table. I was nervous and excited to print these samples as they were my favorite background samples and I hoped the background did not over shine my print.

This is what my second lot of samples looked like after printing the first screen (pink). I really liked these samples much better than the last lot of samples because they do not look as flat. 

This is what they looked like after I had printed the blue screen which also introduces the purple. I really like this as it looks quite digitally done in the background and I would personally wear this print and background as a scarf.

                       

As I did not take a picture of the completed samples as I was busy cleaning my space where I had been working as it is important to leave the print room and table very clean for the next person using it, So this photo is in different light but you see how the green screen came out. I really really love each of these samples and I am so impressed with my self, All the time I spent on my tracing really paid off and it really goes to show if you put the work in you will see results! If you are wondering how to screen print, There is a separate page on my blog where you can read about it, You can get to that from my homepage. 

In conclusion I have had a really productive day in the print room and I really enjoyed the outcome's. Tomorrow I plan to go into college and sample my holographic heat transfer paper onto my samples and to create some more samples in different colours for experimentation. 

I hope you all enjoyed reading about my experience in the print room printing my samples for my final major project and I hope it inspired you all! 

Thankyou for reading! 

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!