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Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Block- and screen-printed fabric

Rifferaffe posted a couple days ago about Galbraith and Paul, Philadelphia designers who block-print fabric yardage. She asks in her post why there are so few people block printing yardage, and I agree that it's a good question. I suggested in her comments that perhaps it's due to the ubiquity of screen printing—every art student and his brother seems to be selling printed t-shirts. At any rate, when it comes to printed yardage, commercially printed or hand-dyed fabric seem to be the only real choices available to quilters. It seems like we should have more independently printed options, particularly considering the pro-pattern trend that's been in the air for a while.

There are in fact several people I've been noticing recently who sell short-run screen-printed fabric, including the Australian trio of Lara Cameron, Shannon Lamden, and Kristen Doran. Come to think of it, I don't know of any independent designers selling printed yardage who aren't Australian. Why is that? Add Prints Charming (designers of the widely admired Follow Your Imagination line for FreeSpirit, as well as hand-screened fabric) to the mix, and it starts to look like Australia is leading the charge of a certain type of modern textile design. I used some Follow Your Imagination prints in Spots, and I'm keeping my eye on the independent designers—they come out with new colourways all the time.

Feeding Frenzy printed pigeon books

But back to block printing. I've been thinking about block printing small amounts of yardage myself for a while now—these notebooks were test runs for some "Feeding Frenzy" pigeon fabric I'd like to print. Block printing each pigeon individually (as opposed to all together on a block or screen laid out ahead of time) gave me a lot more control to vary the design rather than make strict repeats, though it's obviously pretty labour-intensive. I liked how the bookcovers turned out, but the chocolate brown cover looks better in the photo (the ink isn't opaque enough for the dark fabric), so I planned to get more appropriate ink before starting on more fabric. And now, of course, the whole op has been postponed until after The Move.

Naturally I'd love to use fabric like this in quilting, but I'll have to run some tests to see if the sewing machine cooperates. The ink isn't too heavy, so hopefully it won't gum up the needle.

4 comments:

Libby said...

Wow thanks for the links - very interesting post.

mizu designs said...

I love the bird feeding pattern you're trying out! Lara put me onto your blog (thanks Lara:). Just wanted to let you know about an American who is blockprinting onto fabric, Kristin from:
www.moonteaartwork.etsy.com
But yes, you're right, we Australians do seem to be taking up the handprinted fabric space!

Thea said...

I'm surprised to learn that nobody in the States is doing short-run screen prints. We do as well but yes, we too are Australian.

Anonymous said...

well, I am here to represent the small population of American hand printers of fabric in Schenectady, New York. I am 3hirs away from each oof these cities:
Boston, Manhatten, and Montreal,Canada.

I print short runs and offer custom colors. ] I hope I am able to share a video of my work.
My most current line is called"Bring Outside in" /Users/Carol/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2008/Roll 351/IMG_0053.JP /Users/Carol/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Origina/Users/Carol/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2008/Roll 351/IMG_0055.JPGls/2008/Roll 348/IMG_0007.JPG