I would just like to share with you some pictures I had taken earlier this week of my work being printed out, which I had done on different fabrics to see what finish I would like for my final pieces.... I did spend all day in the print room as mentioned earlier on in the week, but whilst I was there I was able to see properly how the images were set up on the computer... The digital printer sized the cloth on the role and then this had to be transferred onto the computer before the designs could be put in place. I also had a chat on how the digital printer worked properly, this is really good information for me, rather than just handing my work to printed and leaving it for someone else to do... we went through the process properly from start to finish, from computer to printer, to the steamer, step by step, as this is something I will need to take away with me if I am going to do a lot of digital printing in the future....

  Layout on the computer

The prints being printed on the mimaki printer

I used a number of materials for my samples so I could see the finish I wanted. These are just first samples, nothing final yet.

These two prints are shown before going into the steamer, they have been pinned onto an oversized steaming cloth which will then be rolled around the inside of the steamer 

The prints going into the steamer for around 20mins.

Below are two of my designs once they had been steamed. It is interesting to see the difference in colour once they have been done, it is a lot stronger and more vibrant than I anticipated, what should have been a mauve/pink colour in the background of my swan design, turned out like a fawny brown/peach color and the colours in the rabbit design were very orangey looking. This is something that I need to take into consideration, because the colours that were there before being steamed were exactly how I wanted them to turn out. It's nice to see your images go to print on fabric though rather than paper, you can now get a feel of how things are going to look. Also something else I needed to be sure of was the process of washing the dyes from the fabric, I soon realised that I had not run the colours under the water till they had run clear, and, as a result of this the darker colours tended to bleed out slightly. This is something that I need to make sure of when it comes to printing my final pieces, as I don't want the dye running. However I was told that this could be resolved once I had gone home and left to wash with hot water, so that the dyes had run clear.....

Two