Thursday, September 02, 2010

R/Co. Project: Wood Block Printing

 Time is fast approaching for the runway show so instead of packing snuck in a late night fabric printing test run with the compleated wood block.

The collection of goods that I am planning to send down the runway involves headwear that is built from a nice washed out navy canvas so I want the print to match back to that color. I do not have navy ink so did it the old fashioned way and just mix it up by hand.
 Got out some fabric screen printing ink that I have been meaning to use, eye balled it and went for it. A little blue, a dollop of black, a touch of red, some more blue and a touch more black and.... looks good to me (for some reason color theory dose not click in my head but if I just mess with it for a bit it somehow works out)

The hardest part about block printing fabric is getting a nice transfer onto the fabric. Smaller blocks seam to do better but that is not what we are going for here so...
Laid out some ink onto a large plate glass and rolled the brayer through it and gave the block a nice good coat of ink.



After messing with it and doing a full run of fabric
 it was not as defined as I had hoped, an idea that I must have read in some old library book a long time ago poped into the ol' noggin and reminded me that something needs to be damp. I do not remember if it is the news print under the cloth or the cloth it self... So grabed the spray bottle and gave a new section of cloth a nice sprits and slapped the screen down. Much better!

The final print is not as clean and defined as a screen print or a stencil, it is much more ruff and inconsistent. Love'n it! Can't wait to cut and sew the final piece and see how it looks. Well, more on that later.

If you have never tried block printing why not give it a go?!!!
you could even use a yam if you wanted...

"Keep 'em Flying"

Cheers.

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