printing

Print It Yourself – My favorite DIY printing books

September 18, 2012

I meet so many creative people, both in person at sales and events, and online on Etsy and Pinterest. Lots of people ask me about how I learned to print on fabric, and the truth is, I’m almost entirely self-taught! I learned traditional printmaking techniques (relief printing, intaglio, lithography, etc.) in college, but I didn’t learn to print onto fabric until after graduation.

I learned fabric printing, both silkscreen printing and relief printing with hand carved blocks, by reading lots of books and by experimenting. The best way to learn to print on textiles is by trying it out for yourself, and you don’t need a fancy studio to get started. These books will help you learn the basics, and guide you through some basic and intermediate project that you can give as gifts, or keep to decorate your home.

These books are invaluable parts of my library, and I return to them often. Some of them focus completely on printing on fabric, but a few are great introductions to printmaking in general, and cover the basics of printing on fabric as well.

Print Liberation / Mastering the Art of Fabric Printing and Design / Dyeing and Screen-Printing on Textiles / Little Owl’s Little Prints / Lotta Prints / Printing By Hand / The Printmaking Bible / A Field Guide to Fabric Design

This book from Christine Schmidt of Yellow Owl Workshop is a great way to introduce young ones to printing – the projects included in her book are absolutely adorable, and will keep you entertained all afternoon.

Lena Cowin’s new book Made By Hand also has some fun printing projects. I didn’t include it in the roundup because it’s not strictly about printing or textile design, but it’s worth picking up!

Do you know of a textile printing book that I shouldn’t miss? Let me know on Twitter or Instagram!

Want to learn more about printmaking? Check out my screenprinting class for CreativeLive, and learn to print your own designs!

How does silkscreen printing work?

September 17, 2012

Update: I now offer an online class to learn to screenprint your own designs! Sign up for my screenprinting class, and transform your artwork into texiles, prints, posters, and more.

When I sell my textile work for Cotton & Flax in person, I’m often asked, “How do you print your fabrics?” The answer I usually give is that the fabrics are silkscreen printed, which I do by hand in my home studio. I talked about the process behind creating hand printed textiles last week, but I didn’t go into much detail about the silkscreen printing (or “screenprinting”) process. I know not everyone is familiar with how silkscreen printing works, so I made this little video that shows a snippet of the printing process.

This wasn’t intended to be a tutorial, so I skip over all the setup steps (like covering the silkscreen in emulsion and exposing my imagery onto the screen), as well as the parts that come after the printing (like heat setting the ink). The video just cuts to the chase, and you can see how I use a squeegee to hand print each piece of fabric through the silkscreen mesh template, making a piece of patterned fabric that will later be sewn into a pillow cover.

In the video, I’m printing one of my favorite patterns, the DNA squiggles, which will be sewn into small pillows. I’m hoping to expand my studio soon to print larger pieces of fabric (and maybe begin to sell yardage of my hand printed fabric), but for now, I’ll continue to print small pieces. If you’d like to learn more about silkscreen printing, there are a ton of great resources both online and in print for learning how to screen print at home. I’ve featured my top 6 DIY Printing books here, in case you’re curious!

What does ‘Printed by Hand’ really mean?

September 10, 2012

Cotton & Flax is a line of handmade textiles, all of which are sewn and printed by hand. I take great pride in this fact, because I am all too familiar with the long hours and specialized skills required to complete a project like this without outsourcing any part of the production. But I find that people often ask me, “What does ‘printed by hand’ really mean?” I’d love to share some insights into what hand-printing textiles is all about.

My textiles begin their lives as simple, natural fabrics, like linen or cotton, which are all prewashed. The process of designing a pattern takes a long time, as my patterns often start in my sketch book, then go through several revisions before I land on the final design. Even my pattern designs are made by hand, often using pen and ink, or a hand carved stamp which I will use to create a repeat pattern.

After I finalize a pattern design, I use a transparency of that design to create a silkscreen, which I can use to reproduce larger repeat patterns onto my fabrics. In large textile factories, these screens can be big, sometimes up to 5 feet across (you can see some in the Marimekko factory video I featured a while back). Since I work in a small studio space, I had to get a bit creative on how to print my fabrics. I don’t print the full width of the bolt of fabric, since that would require a much larger workspace. Rather, I print smaller sections cut to the exact size of my pillows and tea towels, so there is very little (often no) waste fabric when I begin the sewing process.

The printing itself is my favorite part of the process. I have so many fond memories of printing over the years, and have come to love the small details that are unique to this process: the smell of the ink; the squeak of the silkscreen squeegee as it pulls across the screen, flooding it with ink; the subtle pop of the screen as it pulls away from the fabric after a successful ink impression has been made. I hope to share more about the details of printmaking processes soon, I hope you’ll find them as charming as I do.

But the best part of hand-printed fabric is the tactile quality it provides, and the bold opaque quality that the ink imparts on the fabric. To date, I have yet to see a piece of digitally printed fabric that can compete with a silkscreen fabric’s boldness and quality of line. Hand-printed fabric requires a level of physical labor that isn’t required of digital printmaking, but I find that the extra effort creates a striking product that is rich in tradition and history.

Marimekko Fabric Printing

August 29, 2012

Have you seen this video of the Marimekko factory? I loved this glimpse into how their fabrics are made. Most of Marimekko’s fabrics are silkscreen printed, either using flat screens like the ones I use here at Cotton & Flax, or rotary screens (which you see sometimes in the video above. I enjoyed seeing printers working diligently to produce those iconic Marimekko patterns.

While only the first half of the video deals with the fabric printing and production (the rest is sort of an infomercial for Marimekko’s retail shops, and maybe Finland as a whole…), I love that Marimekko offers some transparency about how and where their goods are made, and the processes behind their creation.

The difference between production at Marimekko and production here at Cotton & Flax is astounding (it’s a one woman operation around here!), but I’d still like to follow their lead in the coming weeks by sharing more about how my work is made. Keep an eye out for that soon!