False Start

This week, I attempted to do my screen printing for real. Yes, no more practising. I am talking about printing on real fabric to be sewn up into real cushions that I can sell on etsy and madeit.

Unfortunately it didn’t quite go to plan. The first print was perfect. No problems there. The subsequent prints didn’t work. If you look at the photo you can see that the ink wasn’t coming through the outside lines of some of the flowers. I kept trying on new pieces of fabric, thinking that all I needed was a little more pressure in those areas. But every print after the first had that same problem. In the end I gave up printing on my linen as it was just wasting fabric. I had a few more goes on calico but nothing I did seemed to fix the problem.

It was extremely disappointing. And because I don’t have much experience to draw from I can’t quite work out where I went wrong. I guess I will try again this week, starting off on calico and see what happens.

Sunday Stash #11

So, I bet you are wondering why I have a picture of plain old linen for my Sunday Stash. It's not very exciting you might say. The thing is I was quite excited when all 4 meters of it arrived at my door. I am finding it almost impossible to track down quality natural coloured linen that isn't $50/m in Melbourne. Maybe I am just not looking in the right places. Anyway this linen comes all the way from Bunbury WA, courtesy of my mum. It's the last of the roll too so I am going to have to keep looking for a supplier in Melbourne.

More Testing...

I did another test run of my bird design screen print but this time on real fabric. I bought some natural linen to make cushions with and I wanted to see whether the print would work on the linen. I bought the fabric online so I didn’t realise it had a lot of slubs on the surface and quite a coarse weave. Anyway as you can see from the photos the print turned out pretty well and I managed to avoid printing on any slubs.


I am going to team the linen with some Japanese fabric I bought on my last visit to Amitie to make the cushions. All I need do now is sew my sample up when I can find some time, life is a little hectic at the moment. I will keep you posted.

Oh, and if anyone has a source for natural coloured linen that they would be willing to give up I will be eternally grateful because I am not having a lot of luck finding any.