Digital Printed Fabric

Why Digital?

I wanted to experiment by using my lino cut designs by repeating and reducing the images to create a design for fabrics. Was there a way to get my designs in multi-colour/smaller/larger etc? I could use the lino itself but there are a few factors which influenced my choice. Lino is great for printing one or two images upon fabric after that screen printing is a much more economical process in terms of time and possible errors when wanting to print a large area and meters of fabric. For the best visual design, depending on the size of the lino when using digital you can adapt the design very easily. For example when carving an image which you would like to repeat and turn it will only face one direction and you would have to carve another if you would like the two images to mirror each other.

So I started to explore what other options there are for fabric design. Spoonflower seems popular but I wondered what is out there a bit closer to home and whether Spoonflower is worth all the hype? So far I have found a few companies based in the UK, so it is a limited investigation so far but most quality ones have swatch testing and colour matching, here are the ones I have sampled so far...

Price:

HTS Web Site   Under 10 meters around £31 per meter on Linen not including postage. Over 10meters then it goes down to £23 per meter without postage.
Liberty Press Web Site   Small quantities £23 per meter on canvas cotton includes postage.
Spoonflower Web Site   Small quantities £18 per meter on linen/cotton mix includes postage.

As you can see it is tricky to beat Spoonflower on price, but what about quality?

Quality:

Colour matching- HTS offer the best quality in terms of fabric and best match to my colour design, the Linen is a natural colour and lovely and heavy perfect for cushions. After them Spoonflower were a close second and unfortunately Liberty came a poor last. After a cool wash the Liberty Press fabric was a real disappointment, patchy and faded! The Liberty Press fabric arrived within a day but I won't be ordering more. Such a shame as the Liberty Press site is easy to use and they offer wall paper and scarf design service which I can not pass comment on.

After washing @30 degrees reduced spin cycle-Liberty Press- Left side.

Compare that with the quality of what you can achieve by hand, even after washing it is light fast.

Lino relief printing

OK so you could hand wash the Liberty Press fabric but it still can't compare to hand printing.

If you like the idea of using a British based company and are going to order several meters of fabric then HTS would be a good starting point, with good customer service and quality fabrics, if however you only want a meter or so then Spoonflower is a great option if you are in no rush for the fabric as it takes 3 weeks minimum to arrive to the UK.

I never realised how complicated it would be just to get my designs onto fabric, there are lots of types of printed fabric and as a savvy customer I like to know my options! You really need to have an idea of the types of printing that is available, this page was helpful in developing my understanding... Types of Digital Printing:  I think as digital printing develops it will become more readily available to the end user but as for now it really is only affordable in the UK on larger quantities. 

So for me Spoonflower came out on top but I think, after all the best results for me, in terms of colour and fastness has to be using the Lino directly! Full circle! I think I will be having a go at screen printing also so I will keep you posted on my results. I have just found a gorgeous heavy Russian Linen so I can't wait to print on that :) Here are samples of my hand printed cushions...

Please feel free to share your explorations into digital printing...

Hand Printed Cushions

I hope that you all had a great Christmas and New Year!

A new year a new project for me and my deadline is tight which is one of the reasons I am very cross with myself! What's the saying, "Less haste, more speed!" I don't like negative posts as I am a positive person and negativity is never productive but a problem shared and all that...

A Lesson Learned:

Always Plan Thoroughly!

I have been making hand printed fabric for some prototype cushions and took time to sew the cushions first, adding piping and everything, printed on lovely 100% linen!

Because I decided to make envelope cushions I had a nice thick seam on the back which would cross where the image would be printed. If I had planned and printed first this would have been avoided! I should know better-slaps back of the hand! Well, in reality I can make another and mistakes are there to be learnt from but time lost I can't get back. Hopefully others can learn from my mistake!

unacceptable uneven image

On the upside I was able to print some other images onto fabric... on a natural mixed cotton:

3 pigeons in plum

Watch this space as I will be printing more of the Red Doves until I am completely happy with the result.

Hand Printed Fabric- Relief Printing

Block Printing on Fabric Update:


I have been using my lino print designs to print directly onto fabric. Cotton and linen in it's natural form looks great combined with the images and prints really well. I wash the fabric first to remove any anti-creasing coatings that can be on the surface of the fabric.

Before printing iron the fabric (linen is notorious for creasing so use plenty of steam!) It looks like I haven't bothered in the photo but believe me I did! More ironing once the ink is dry! Typically my iron has never seen so much action so now has decided to give up!

Having tested the permanency of the oil based inks on the fabric by leaving the ink to dry, ironing and then putting through the dryer for 10 minutes it has survived the washing machine test at a 40 degree wash.

Speedball do an ink especially for block printing onto fabric currently available at Intaglio Printmakers in London. Added to my Christmas wish list!

The Fish Tea Towel coming soon to my Etsy shop:

Tea Towel is a big as my son! Arms up son!

Next blog post will give you a sneak peak into my lampshade making tips from hand printed fabric...

Thanks for reading :)