silkscreen printing

Ready to learn how to screenprint?

December 28, 2018

It’s been two years since I taught my Screenprinting Class for CreativeLive, and it’s been amazing to see positive reviews of the class, and to hear from students who are diving in to their first screenprinting projects. I’m not teaching any in-person screenprinting workshops in 2019, but this class is always available for those of you who’ve been curious about how I create Cotton & Flax products.

I love ringing in the new year by exploring new creative projects! My introductory-level class is a perfect place to start if you’ve never tried screenprinting before, or if you need a refresher on the basics of how to get started. I walk you through all the steps of creating screen prints from home, and share my tips and tricks for creating amazing prints in small spaces. It’s not as tough as you’d think!

Erin Dollar screenprinting Screen printing is a great way to see your designs come to life as you apply them to paper, fabric, or other surfaces. It’s a medium that has tons of practical uses, and adds a dynamic edge to your creative toolkit. Sign up for my screen printing class on CreativeLive, and enjoy anytime access to the full class, so you can learn at your own pace!

Fabrics printed in the USA

September 12, 2017

Arroyo fabrics - printed in the USA I loved partnering with LA-based Robert Kaufman to create Arroyo, my first fabric collection. They have a fantastic network of US-based printing partners that they were able to coordinate with to print the entire collection domestically. The result is a beautiful collection of overprinted fabric, which looks just as bold and vibrant as my hand-printed fabrics.

One of the advantages of partnering with a US-based printer is a smaller carbon footprint, which works towards to my goal to strive for a greener studio environment. While international printers also create beautiful quality fabrics under ethical conditions, I feel confident that pushing for local manufacturing and production could create a big impact in terms of the textile industry’s effect on global warming, and I hope that I’ll get to partner with more USA production partners for future collaborations.

Printing (and not printing)

June 25, 2013

I know I promised you a post with a more in depth look at my printing process, but something pretty out of the ordinary happened over the weekend… I took two days off from printing! It was nice to rest my back muscles a little, and enjoy the first days of summer. I am working with a friend to develop a short video showing my printing process, but I’ll certainly be sharing more photos before then.

In Progress

February 28, 2013

Just a couple iPhone photos of work in progress. Working hard to get things finished to photograph this weekend, I have a little photoshoot planned.

Lots of activities like this happening around the studio lately: stamping the interiors of pillow flaps with the Cotton & Flax brand. No itchy tags here, you can rest your head easily on my pillows.

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!

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!