Tuesday 13 November 2012

Experimental prints

As part of my sampling period, I have decided to experiment with playing with sublimation printing on top of a coloured fabric. For this, I have used a synthetic fabric due to these achieving a stronger image when printed.



I'm really disappointed with these two samples, as I was hoping this fabric would take the sublimation print ink better, however, it just turned my designs green. It's a real shame as this fabric contains a slight shimmer as seen within butterfly wings. 



Overall i'm really pleased with how these samples worked out as I think the beige fabric really brings out the colour of the blue. I also feel that it gives my designs a softer edge, compared to the harsh, bright white fabrics I have previously used. 










Wednesday 7 November 2012

Unsuccessful dye session..

After having a tutorial with my tutor regarding my recent collection of designs and fabric samples, it was suggested that I played around with dyeing the fabric before sublimation printing on top. So today i thought i'd give it a go and experiment with a range of different fabrics and see which ones were the most successful. 



My main aim was to dye the polyester chiffon as this is the main fabric I intend to use within this project. However, using Dylon dyes just doesn't work and the cream colour I want to achieve is impossible! The only fabric that was successful, was some kind of cotton mix but I wasn't very happy with the tone of colour as I feel that it's far too orange/yellow.



   Dylon dye in pebble beige (Left) vs tea and coffee mix (Right)


I also experimented with using tea and coffee to see if natural dyeing would be more succesful. This time, the fabric took the colour but when washed, the colour was completely lost due to the lack of colour fixing! To add to this, the tea and coffee didn't give me the correct colour anyway! Might just have to purchase some cream fabric instead!