Screen Printing

After doing a week of digital print, I moved on to doing screen printing. Although I enjoy screen printing, I’ve never considered myself any good at it. I think this is because I can’t control the outcome as much as I can with stitch or digital print.

I had two and a half days to get my printing done which I found very stressful! I don’t like the print and dye rooms so much because everyone was rushing to get theirs done and I like to work more relaxed without the mess!

Yet again I couldn't resist working into my prints using
embroidery, silk paints and beading

However I learnt how to use devore, discharge inks, how to print on silk probably and mix up dyes as well as other useful techniques. I found it hard to get the devore correct. Devore works using a fabric with a mix of protein and plant fibres. In our case, silk being protein and viscose is plant. Where the ink prints after heated it dissolves the plant fibres. You are then meant to dye the fabric separately, using acid and direct dyes. Mixing the dyes to get the two tone effect didn’t really work for me. When I dyed the silk and then tried to dye the viscose this just went over the top of the colour the fabric was previously.