THE SILK BUREAU AND REPEAT PATTERNS

So I don't have to panic about hand printing loads of fabric and running out of time, I'm going to get some of my designs digitally printing. This way I can get lots of fabric printed quickly, and the quality of my designs will very crisp compared to the moodier look of the gum arabic prints.

I started by contacting The Silk Bureau, a digital print company that I used to work for, to get hold of a price list. I decided to go with them partly due to loyalty, but also because I know how to correctly set up my files for them and their prints are extremely high quality. I also arranged to go in and pick up some printed fabric samples.

To practice making a tile, I used some of my pre-made brushes  to make a pattern, so I could refresh my memory on how to use the offset filter to create a seamless design.

I created the tile below, and then saved it as a pattern pre-set.

I used the fill bucket set to pattern to fill an a3 page with the leafy design I had just made, and I was happy that it repeated seamlessly without any visible lines in the design. 

I started by using my illustrations from the gum arabic paper, as I like the detail on them as well as the washy grey background- to get this digitally printed also means that it will be cohesive with the rest of my printed fabric and not look too digital and out of place. I made a small tile at first like the leaf pattern above:

When I set the offset it leaves gaps where I can fill in the space with more designs, here I used my brushes and white detail to add illustrations into these spaces- and below filled and A3 page

I then wanted to make the tile bigger so that the pattern wouldn't be tiny on 1.4m x 1m fabric-

And I repeated it on a large canvas to get an idea of what it would look like on a large piece of fabric:

I liked the moodiness of this image, but I didn't like the hand that I had drawn in as it looked weaker compared to the other illustrations on there. I also decided to print the first batch of gum arabic illustrations digitally as I think they are very striking.

I created a Photoshop file that was the width of the fabric I was printing on ( I decided on Poly Canvas- a nice weight fabric that wasn't too expensive) and the length that I wanted to print- so I ended up with a photoshop canvas size of 1.48m x 3m. I filled the top 1m with the new repeat pattern I had made and then filled the rest of the space with the different illustrations that I wanted printed.

When I picked the fabric up I was so pleased with the detail of the illustrations on the fabric I had chosen, the only thing that made me thing I might not use it for the actual costume is the fact that the poly canvas is very white and the linen/curtain lining that I had used was cream coloured. Instead, I might use the digital printed fabric for wall hangings in the exhibition.

The digitally printed fabric: