A Day In The Life #7

All day I've sewn and sewn and sewn! My big exhibition scarf is finally coming together, The angelina fibers and needle felted bacterial petri dishes I had are all sewn onto the scarf, Of course with the scarf being 4.5 meter I had not created enough to cover the whole scarf as it is huge! Tonight and tomorrow I shall be creating more needle felting's and more angelina fibers to sew onto my scarf, As well as needing to make needle felted jewelry and print my scarfs to sell, So you will probably understand how stressful it is right now but hopefully it will all be worth it. So far I have sewn the angelina fibers underneath the needle feltings, But I shall also have random needle feltings scattered everywhere. Here are a few pictures of my progress.

That's been pretty much it for today guy's, hand sewing takes a lot of time and I've not had much time to do anything else today. I hope you all are enjoying the progress I am making.

Thankyou for reading x

A Day In The Life - Long Weekend

Sorry I've not posted in a few day's I've had a bit of a break from blogging/preparing for my exhibition, even though my exhibition is on the 23rd of this month, It was a well needed break. Although, back to reality now. Friday was the day I finally got my holographic heat transfer material onto my big scarf, I had already cut out many circles out of the material and was ready to use the heat press to stick them on. I thought this would take longer than it did but it only took an hour or so, Thanks to the good people in the print room for helping me getting the backing off of the heat transfer. The heat transfer was to put in the circles from my design I printed. In each circle there are 3 little circles (where the heat transfer will go) however I decided to put the heat transfer in only 1 or 2 circles rather than all 3 of them as I did not want it to look too much.
The heat press is set at 180 degrees and to a timer of only 18 seconds, This is enough for heat transfer, pressing fabric and what ever else you may need to use the heat press for. After peeling the backing off the heat transfer I then placed them where they needed to be and used the heat press to stick it on. Here are a few photo's.

The outcome of this looked really amazing. My plan for this big scarf is to make it look really amazing and wacky. To sew loads of things onto it and for it to look as tactile as possible. This was a good start.

After a nice shopping filled weekend off doing college work and blogging, we come to today, Monday. Today I have hand sewn on some angelina fibers and needle feltings I created. Sewing them on using a sewing machine would be much faster and secure, But I don't have a sewing machine at home and after hand sewing them on I really loved the way it looked. 

I love how this is progressing into something more tactile, I shall be sewing more of these on my scarf tomorrow and created more needle felted jewelry. 

Thank you all for reading x

Sneak Peek Of One Of My Silk Scarfs!!

Here's a quick sneak peek of one of my scarfs I shall be selling at my exhibition at Barnsley College from the 23rd June - 27th June. Every scarf to be sold will be different colours and will range from silk to muslin. I hope you all like it and you can manage to come look at all the hard work I have done!!

A Day In The Life #5 - Printing Silk Scarfs

My plan for today was to go to college this morning to cut out my holographic heat transfer material for my big scarf as I need to do this first before I can start sewing on my needle felting's. When I got to college the print room was free and I was able to print which is a bonus as I want to get everything printed as soon as possible then I can concentrate on other things such as my needle feltings for my scarf and for in my petri dishes and also for my rings and earings which came today!! So excited about that!!

Today I printed two small scarf's, one silk and one muslin, using very different colour's. The first one was my silk scarf. I started off by masking taping the silk down to the print table which I had previously cleaned and dried. 

The first colour I printed was a turquoise and blue colour and after I printed it, it looked like this.

After I had printed blue I washed my screen and squeegee and put them to dry, I got out my second screen and put some clean gloves on and got printing, This time I printed a bright pink colour.

I really like how this one looked after the second screen but I was struggling to think of what colour to use on my final screen. I decided to use the silver pigment, Although I had not used this before or sampled it I thought it would look good so I went ahead and used it.

The end product looks really amazing the silver pigment gives such a good finished look and I am so glad I used it!! I washed my screen and squeegee and put them to dry and took the fabric I just printed into the classroom to dry, I then washed and dried the table.

The next scarf I printed was one I dyed, pressed and washed yesterday which is the orange and yellow muslin one aswell as an off cut from my big scarf which I had dyed a few days before. I started off by masking taping the fabric's to the table, I then got my colour's and first screen ready and started printing!! The first colour I used for these fabrics was a coral/orange pigment I mixed myself. 

Leaving my pigment to dry on the fabric I took my screen and squeegee in the wash room to clean and then placed my screen in the drying cupboard. When it was time to do the next screen I went for a bright pink and hoped it would look alright.

You can not really tell on the picture above but the out come of the second screen looked really good and bright. The pink and orange really complimented each other on the background colour of my fabric. I next printed a purple pigment after I had washed and put my screen to dry and got my last screen out. 

I really liked the outcome of this scarf, perfect for summer! When I took it off the table and into the class room to dry, The colours look really beautiful when the fabric floats! I am so happy I got to print today as printing a little every chance I can get makes my time management better and means I can focus on my needle felting.

The jewelry making earings and rings I ordered came today and so did my petri dishes for my exhibition. I was so happy when they came as that means I can focus on doing them and I now know the sizes so I can needle felt for them now. 

I am really happy with the work I have completed today. My plan for tomorrow is to maybe go into college (Its my day off) to use the heat press if not then I shall be spending the full day doing some needle felting so I can use the heat press on Friday at college and also use the hot glue gun for my rings and earings.

I really hope you enjoyed my blog post and if you have any ideas for my exhibition or any feedback please feel free to get in contact with me, You can see how to find me on my about me page or just leave a comment on here. 

Thankyou for reading. Come back tomorrow!!

A Day In The Life #4 - Printing My Big Scarf

Today has been the big day!! I've finally printed up the main part of my exhibition which is my big scarf!! Keep reading if you want to know how I did it and see how it looked in stages.

To get started I washed down the printing table I was working on and dried it too. I then measured to where my screen would be once placed on the registration bar and laid my fabric in the correct place on the table so my fabric would be clear of 1 inch on each side so I can clean the ends up on the sewing machine at a later date. I used masking tape to tape my fabric down, making sure its straight and its pulled tightly. 

I then got my pigment's together, As I am recreating one of my samples I am using the same colour pigments I used on that sample.

ignore the back colour as I did not need this or use this for my exhibition scarf. 

Once I had my colour's sorted it was time to print, As my screen's and fabric are so large I had to have the help of kathryn to help me print my screens also because I had not used the registration bar before. First off I printed the pink pigment.

After I had printed this colour I was so excited because it was finally coming to life, I washed and put my screen to dry while this pink pigment was drying, I then got my next screen and got ready to print again this time in blue pigment, This will go over some of the pink at a slight angle to make a purple colour with a blue shadow and also just be blue in other places it is printed.

 I then used my third screen and printed the cells to my fabric and this is what the end product looked like.

I am so so so so excited and in love with the outcome of my big exhibition scarf I can't even put it into word's, The colours are just beautiful and I am so proud of the print. I now need to add my mixed media onto the top of it, Such as sewing my needle feltings onto it and adding my holographic heat transfer, Also using dissolvable fabric and angelina fibers to sew onto it. I still have my work cut out but the end product will be so so worth it. I got gave so many packets of angelina fibers today from my tutor it felt like Christmas!!

After I had printed my big scarf I had time to print one of my normal sized scarfs which I shall sell at my exhibition, The one I chose to print was the orange/pink coloured light silk scarf. I started by masking taping the fabric down. I used similar colours but not exactly the same as they were different shades and instead of doing my cells green I did them a coral colour for this scarf. Here are the pictures after each screen print although I failed to get one of the end product, However I know you shall see it in a future blog post.

I did not get a picture after printing the last screen so I am sorry about that. After I took this off the print table and hung it to dry I instantly fell in love with it, The way the pattern and colours move on the floaty silk amazed me. I am so happy with the work I have done today and I cant wait to produce more.

My to do list from tonight is...

- Sew my needle felting's onto my big scarf.

- Do more dissolveable fabric on the sewing machine.

- Use angelina fibers and interfacing to create more mixed media for my big scarf.

- Use my holographic heat transfer material on my big scarf.

- Print up my other smaller scarfs and dye more material.

- Buy Petri Dishes and Jar's

I hope you have enjoyed tonights blog post, Come back tomorrow to see what I've been getting up to tomorrow.

Thankyou for reading.

The Science Of Textiles - Final Design Sheets

These are my final design sheet's. The purpose of these sheets are to show or explain what I want to create for my final piece/s. For one of these sheets I wanted to screen print on to it but with me having big screens and little time I thought it would be a better idea to photocopy some of my samples to show my design instead. The first picture (Top) shows that I am planing on making scarfs for my final piece. To do this sheet I used berol and water and collaged a photocopy of my sample to make it look like a scarf. I also used holographic heat transfer to add detail in the sunglasses and earrings. The second final design sheet (Bottom) is more informative including measurements for my big exhibition scarf, a swatch of fabric which I will be using and the sample I photocopied and featured on this sheet is the sample I am re creating for my big final piece. If you have been following my journey through my final major project on this blog then you will know that I am also creating a few smaller silk scarfs which I shall hopefully sell. I have not talked about them on my final design sheet as my main focus is my big scarf I am creating. 

As I plan on using tactile techniques on my exhibition scarf I have also shown them on my final design sheet. Dissolvable fabric to look like cells through a microscope and needle felted bacterial petri dishes which will have Angelina fibers on.

I hope you all enjoyed my journey through my final major project, My next post will be my evaluation. This is the end guys! All thats left to do is to produce my final piece before my exhibition in a months time. So watch out for more blog post's about that!
Thanks for reading x 

Print Room Fun!!

After spending my morning organising and adding to my unit 10 folder I then spent the afternoon doing some more printing sample's to add to my tech file experimenting with different colours and fabric's. Firstly I had a chat with the instructor Kathryn about my exhibition and my final piece's, My original plan was to have a big scarf as my main exhibition piece, This will be a scarf not to be worn but just for show. I would also have 3 little wearable scarfs all the same colours which I could sell. We now came up with a new plan which is to do the same but the main scarf bigger (the whole length of the printing table 4.5m x 1.5m) and to do many techniques on it such as sewing needle felting's onto it aswell as other techniques. I will also create as many other scarfs as I can using different colour's and materials so there are more choices for if people would like to buy them. On to printing...

Firstly I bought some fabric just at A4 size as it is just to experiment with colours to see how the colours and the fabrics react and see what colour pigments look good on top of procian dyes I've not yet used in this project.

After I bought my fabric which is a mix of habotai silk light, cotton and white muslin I then mixed some procian dyes in cups to use to make my backgrounds. In my previous printing room blog post you can see I use bigger tubs to put my diluted procian dyes in but this time I used smaller cups with the procian dyes still diluted. I also used a bigger tub and filled this with water to place my sample in before dying it as I like the bled and smudge affect it gives when adding the dye to a wet surface, This looks differently on different material.

I mixed some different colours to which I used for my last batch of samples as I wanted to experiment and see which would look good as I have planned to produce a few different scarfs in different colours using different fabrics. My technique to dye the backgrounds for these samples were to soak the sample in water and rinse it out then place on a piece of news print making sure it is flat. I then use 1 brush for each colour and choosing which every colour I want I splat the colour onto the fabric and then it bled and smudged, Doing this many times with different colours untill I got the effect I liked. I then put it on the drying rack to dry.

 I did not take many pictures of dyeing the backgrounds of my samples but you can see them clearly in the picture's I have took during my time printing on top of these samples.
After the samples had dried (all 8 of them), I did some yellow and orange based and some bright pink and blue based, I started to print on them. Now this is a two man job as my screens are so big so I had some help with this. 

Using different colours with my screens really got me excited to create my scarfs as there are so many different colours I could combine and I think I have added my style to this project really perfectly. Because of time management I did not take as many pictures as I could have as I was very busy in the print room as the final day to hand in all my work is Friday. I will not be handing in my final pieces as I have not started them yet but I have time before my exhibition to do these as they are not to be rushed. My plan is to get all my sampling out of the way in the next 2 days as everything I want to put on my final pieces have to be sampled so I shall be a very busy bee. 

I have found using bigger screens so much more easier and gave me an idea of what industry is really like, Although carrying and washing my screens has been hard and printing is a two man job it has been easier in the way that I can do many samples at once and for my final pieces it will not take me too long to print. 

Above are pictures of the pigments I used today to print with...

Reddy Pink - Scarlet pigment and Brill red.

Coral Pink - Scarlet Pigment and Orange

Lime - Yellow and Green Pigment

All these colours are really bright!!

Here are a few pictures of the final outcomes from the print room today...

I am so happy with the outcome's of todays print room fun! I am really happy with my project so far and I think I have shown my skills really well and I hope my exhibition reflects me well. I now need to do some more samples with different and unique things for my exhibition piece scarf as they have to be in on Friday.

I really hope you enjoyed reading about my time in the print room and I am so happy everything is coming along so well!!!

Thankyou for reading and if you have any questions or would like to request to buy a scarf that I shall be making then please get intouch!