Week Four. 10th March.

After creating some smaller samples and deciding that the colours worked well, I started to print larger (A1-A0) fabric samples. This was so I could begin pinning on a mannequin to get an idea of how to develop these fabrics.

I was also keen to explore fabric manipulation within my printing and so began manipulating fabric before printing, by scrunching it and fising it under the heat press, or pleating the fabric. I then printed on top of these and opened them up when they had been printed upon. I liked this technique, but was not sure whether it was suitable for me:



I also began to work with Direct dyes, I pleated and rolled three pieces of fabric and then dip-dyed them:

I also solidly dyed three pieces of fabric, which I then used discharge upon and then printed using the acid dyes. Again I liked this technique, but was not sure whether it was suitable for my work:

To further my experiments with fabric manipulation i used one of the dip-dyed fabrics (habotai) and using a screen with the imag of the scanned fabric that looks like a net, I printed Puff binder onto the reverse. When I ironed this I hoped that the strength of the binder with the light-weight of the fabric would cause the fabric to be manipulated, but this did not happen. Although I was quite excited about the possibility of this working, I also like the effect of hand manipulation on the fabric, and so do not feel that this needs to be changed.