Fabric Test Dying...

Notes

• Cotton is cellulose and comes from plants.

• Acid dye is animal based and will dye hair and nails.

• The clear discharge paste strips colour out of everything.

• Pigment Binder sits on the surface of the fabric. Ideal for T shirt printing and similar projects.

• Dye paste is localised dying.

• Pigment Binder will make fabrics like silk and chiffon stiff due to its properties so only a dye paste can be used on these to keep the fabric flowing.

PROCESS:

I selected a sheet of my silk fabric and a sheet of my wool fabric. I laid a big sheet of paper underneath my work ad used 8 pins (one in each corner) to secure my work on the paper and to the table while I screen print.

To prepare my fabric I used masking tape to tape off some stripes to work with. To start dying I cut another big bit of paper from the roll. Cut this in half and placed either side of the stripe I wanted to dye. I placed the screen over the top, makingsure the whole stripe was covered. I then added the selected dye paste to the screen. The below picture was my stripe after the screen and paper was removed. I dried this before moving onto the next stripe.

I did one stripe of the same colour on each fabric to see the variances the different dyes had on the different fabrics.

I carried on dying my stripes with different dyes. I used illuminating discharge, procion dye paste, clear discharge and acid dye paste to create my stripes.

I labelled all my stripes as I went along so that I wouldn’t get confused and would have a clear layout of what dye created what.

These are my finished pieces and they will go into the steamer ready for next Wednesday. I will then do some stripes going the opposite way to see how the dyes react with each other and what colours I can create.

At the start of the year the thought of textiles made me nervous and I expressed these nerved in my PDP journal early on. This was something that was completely new to me and I didn't know the first thing about it. The same worry carried on throughout my first semester until, at the start of my second semester, I started my support module in textile design and processes. This has opened up my mind to the textile world and I don't feel half as nervous as I did at the start of the year. I have already learnt so much to help me through my two remaining years here and I will carry it through until after I graduate. I would love to implement textile design into my fashion design now and have already started doing this in my studio modules, I feel a lot more at home with the project and cannot wait to see how the end of this module turns out.