Sunday Stash #19

My stash this week is some fabric I have screen printed myself (just now actually and it is still wet!) I took some lovely brown check fabric that I was going to make some pants out of and then screen printed it in white with my doily print. I am going to make some clutches out of it so I guess that means I am going to miss out on the pants.

Finished Bird Cushion

I finally have a finished bird cushion in my etsy shop.

I just got the hang of photographing my brooches and now I have to learn how to take good cushion photos. This one's not so great but I really wanted to get it listed. Taking good photos is one of the hardest things about selling online.

I have fabric to do about 4 more cushions so this week will be getting the screen out to have another go screen printing on the linen. I have bought a smaller squeegee which seems to have helped when I did some practice on calico.

New Bag Pattern

I have been working on a new bag/pouch pattern and after a few tests this is the finished product.

It's a really simple design and folds over to close with a magnetic catch.

The chrysanthemum design on the linen has been screen printed by me in a slightly too bright green. It wasn't quite the green colour I was after but I was trying to keep the screen printing process simple so I used an off the shelf colour from Permaset.

I am going to have to get myself a colour mixing chart and have a go at mixing up some colours.

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.

Finally a cushion

I have finally had time to sew up my sample cushion with the bird screen print but am not sure if I like the way it turned out. Maybe the linen in the centre needs to be a different fabric? I am not entirely sure. In any case it might be back to the drawing board for this one.

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.

Testing Testing

I have finally tested out one of my screens and I am really excited with the results. The final images are clearer than I was expecting. My technique needs improving though, I didn’t lay the ink out evenly on the screen to start with and I had to keep pulling the ink back and forth trying to get the spots I missed. Not bad for a first go though and at least I know that a good image is achievable.




The first print I did was the best out of the three. The only thing wrong with it was that I failed to see some calico thread lying on top of the fabric where I was printing, so you can see a fine line towards the end of my bird’s tail where the thread was.




It was a pretty messy process, especially with black ink. My fingernails are stained black and it looks like I haven’t washed my hands in days (par for the course I think). I got a bit of ink on my clothing, so I need some dedicated screen printing clothes or an apron to wear. When I was in primary school, (a long long time ago) everyone had to have a smock to do art in that was worn over our school uniform for protection. The smock was basically a man’s (dad’s) old shirt worn backwards with elastic around the neck to keep it on. Maybe I need to make myself one of those.

Get Printing

I have had these screens sitting around my house, waiting to be used for a while now. I won’t tell you how long. My official excuse is, I have been waiting for a space in the garage to be cleared so I can set up my screen printing there. It doesn’t seem like that is going happen any time soon, so it looks like the dining room table is my only other choice.

My friend Shogo Saito, who is a very talented illustrator, did the artwork. The doily print was done by me and was the result of too many to mention hours spent playing around with a photo of a doily, Illustrator and Photoshop. I am sure that for anyone who knows how to use these computer programs, it would have taken all of 10 minutes to do.

Stay tuned….