Experimenting in the textiles print room

To come up with my final print for my t-shirt design, I spent a lot of time in the textiles print room. I needed to find a textured way of printing to create the moss effect I was looking for.

Someone suggested using puff binding to do this.

I struggled to find the right colour dye as the colours always Coe out lighter once the puff is heat pressed. I tried another technique to try and achieve the right colour. I painted the already heat set puff binder in proton dye. Although it came out the right colour, it still needed to be steamed to set the dye. This did not work as the puff mostly came off in the wash.

Throughout my experiments with puff binding, I struggled to get the aesthetic I wanted, as the binder was unpredictable.

Instead I decided to try another process called flocking, to give a softer, velvet like texture. this was much more refined and easily came out the right colour. so I decided to use this process instead. However, this would be more costly on my final piece as I wanted to do a rather large area.

One of the technicians later suggested using a mixture of transparent binder and put binder to get the right amount of texture without over doing it. This came out much better and had a sued look to it that I really liked.

Through many hours of experimenting I have learned how important it is to test every option before making a decision. I am so grateful to the textile technicians for all their help, expertise and inspiration. I have really enjoyed using puff binding and flocking and can't wait to use the binding on my final piece.