Swing Coat

As much as I enjoy Lagenlook, I have found it difficult to come up with good jackets. The main problem is that of fitting over Lagenlook tunics, especially regarding to sleeves. Because some of my LL tops have a very wide body with sleeves not starting until halfway between shoulder and elbow, or even lower, the jacket must accommodate all this extra fabric at the shoulder and armscye. What is more, it must accommodate it generously because you don’t want your top to look all crushed when you take your jacket off. This means the jacket has to fit loosely through the shoulders, which can make the whole silhouette look big and baggy if there is also a lot of volume lower down, — which is usually the case with Lagenlook.

Quite a conundrum.

Twotoast has shown some lovely ensembles with jackets on her blog, The Spotty Dog Social Club, but her tops are mostly sleeveles I think, so the sleeve issue doesn’t arise. 

After giving it a fair bit of thought I don’t think it is possible to find one jacket shape that will look good with everything in Lagenlook. With very voluminous maxi skirts or dresses a short, relatively fitted jacket, at least in the shoulders, is probably the best solution. The top or tunic will show below the jacket, but that is fine.

With slimmer skirts or pants there is scope for a looser jacket, with room for tunics with extra fabric in the shoulder area.

My latest experiment with a LL jacket was supposed to strike a happy medium, and go with most of my wardrobe, at least the slim skirts and the pants, both Lagenlook and more conventional ones. I based it on the Tessuti Fave Top pattern, a TNT I have used many times before for tunics. One reason for this was that I only had about 1.80m of the fabric I was wanting to use, 120cm wide, which did no allow a lot of wiggle room in terms of patterns. I also like collarless jackets, because I almost always wear a scarf and a collar just gets in the way.  And finally I really like a nice swing shape.

To convert a top into a jacket is easy, you just need to split the front and add facings. I also like to snug up the neck opening,, so it fits closely at the base of the neck. I lengthened and widened the sleeves, making a deep cuff which goes well with the swing shape. I also lengthened the jacket, for warmth and because I don’t like wasting fabric. That was pushing it, long AND wide can be problematic. Fortunately I do like the result.

Finally I had just enough fabric left over for patch pockets, but decided against them in the end. I like simple lines, the fabric looks beautiful without the disturbance of top stitching and a break in the tone-in-tone pattern, and in any case, in Australia you don’t need pockets to keep your hands warm.  🙂

I bought some statement buttons in Bali a few years ago, which were just right for this jacket. The fabric is a superb black matelasse, bought at Tessutis January sale, also a few years ago. Both had been marinating in my stash waiting for the right project.

This jacket has become a favourite in my wardrobe and has been worn a lot already with just about everything. Success!

This is linked to the blogger party RUMS.

Silk and Paint! Yay!

If ever there was a match made in heaven, it must be white silk and the gloriously intense colours of silk paint. I have no idea why I waited so long to get back to silk painting, hand painted silks are just made for Lagenlook. The painting process is a bit messy, but nothing that can’t be managed. And it is absolutely well worth the effort.

For dyeing, I have been using both Dharma Tradings Procion MX dyes and Batik Oetoro’s Drimarene K. Procion works really well for cottons and linens, and has a great range of pre-mixed colours, not to mention that it is very economical, but for silk, ‘the colours tend to shift’, as it says on the Dharma website. This bland understatement means is that you don’t get the colour you expect, and mostly not in a good way either. Dharma has silk dyes that do a much better job with silk, but I prefer to use a local product, which is the Drimarene sold by Batik Oetoro. It is quite a bit more expensive, but I think easier to use and the colours are wonderfully predictable. I can try them out on paper if I need to get an idea about a new combo before I risk ruining some expensive silk, and the finished result on the fabric won’t be that different. A bit paler probably when it has been washed and dried, but essentially the same. That is particularly important when mixing up a new colour.

Batik Oetoro have a number of recipes for different Drimarene K dyeing processes on their website. I use the one for the hand painting process below:

_______________________________

HAND PAINTING PROCESS

1. Dissolve 10g DR-33 thickener in 1 litre of cold water add teaspoon of acetic acid, stir. If no thickener necessary omit step 1

2. Dissolve

A. 60g Urea and 5g Resist Salt in a little hot water.

B. 40g Soda Ash and 25g Bicarbonate of Soda in a little boiling water.

3. Combine A and B together and add cold water to make 1 litre, bottle and use as needed. (Chemical water)

4. Dissolve dye, add prepared A & B solution and DR-33 ( or Manutex) paste. Adjust to required consistency by adding either more A&B solution (or DR-33 paste if thickener is used).

Once the chemicals are added to the dye solution the prepared mixture must be used within hour.

5. Apply to fabric and leave to dry as long as possible, then rinse in cold water containing SYNTHRAPOL and few drops of vinegar.

______________________________________

I don’t use thickener, because I want my paint to flow freely and run as much as possible to achieve a watercolour effect. I also replace the resist salt with ordinary cooking salt (NOT iodised). I was told that this was ok when I tried to buy the resist salt, and so far using the substitute has worked for me just fine.

I prepare the chemicals in the water solution and fill them into a bottle. Make sure you label it well, so nobody will be tempted to drink this concoction. I don’t think it is poisonous, but it won’t do your husband or kids any good either. It really is best not to use a food container for chemicals to avoid mix ups.

With the bottle of chemical water at the ready I set up the fabric. I use four old chairs for the four corners of the fabric length, and attach masking tape to the top of the chair backs. Then I pin the fabric to this masking tape with a normal pin. It is a good idea to double up the masking tape in the area where you pin, or it might tear. If you have more than 2 m of fabric to paint, you may want to use additional chairs or use something else to support the fabric. As it is, the fabric sags between the attachment points, creating a sort of vortex at the lowest point once you apply the paint. I rather like that effect, but if you don’t, you may want to spray large sheets of cardboard with spray adhesive to hold your fabric while you paint. Or fix the fabric to the cardboard with thumbtacks or pins. I have not tried this, but will if or when the need arises.

I mix up my paints, meaning I put a couple of teaspoons of dye powder into a plastic cup and add hot water to dissolve the powder. Don’t use too much water, you still have to add the chemical solution in the bottle and you don’t want to dilute the dye too much. You don’t need at lot of dye. A third of a plastic cup for each colour is heaps.

One important point about the dye: it only works on natural fibres. It dyes my wooden chairs (just as well they are ancient), but the small plastic camping washing machine I use for dyeing, the Chux cloth I use to clean up the dye drips, the plastic cups I use to hold the dyes, and pretty much anything else of man made origin remains completely untouched. That is very handy to know in case of spills. Oh, and wear gloves. This stuff dyes skin beautifully and semi permanently, at least until the top layer of skin is sloughed off. I use a plastic scouring pad to try and keep my hands respectable, but gloves are much less painful. And I also wear black clothes, old ones, just in case.

Once the paint is ready I put some of the chemical water into a spray bottle and spray the silk until it is thoroughly soaked. I don’t think this would work with cotton or linen, you would need to immerse these fabrics. But silk is so thin that it soaks easily with the spray bottle.

When my fabric is soaked all over I take a big paint brush, dip it into the paint and start to paint freehand. I start with the lightest colour, because I can paint over the top of this if need be. If there is too much of a dark colour on the fabric there is nothing you can do to fix that. I like to get a nice balance between my colours, and I always add black. Not for any particular artistic reason, I just have a lot of black pants which I want to be able to wear with the finished top. 🙂  Of course if you want to wear pants or a skirt of a different colour, you would try to incorporate that colour instead. But black is easiest to match.

I leave the painted fabric in place to dry, then take it down and leave it overnight. Not sure if the latter is strictly necessary, but it doesn’t hurt. Then I wash it with Synthrapol and vinegar as instructed.

And here is the end result, using the Tessuti Fave Top pattern. You can find a detailed discussion of this pattern here. The finished garment is lighter than the wet fabric, but I just love the colours all the same, so much so that I can’t help looking at them when I am wearing the top and admiring how beautiful all the different shades and combinations are. Pathetic, isn’t it, guess this has turned me into a colour junkie.   🙂

And fired with zeal, I also painted this scarf. This time I used only turquoise, mid blue and black. If you have a close look you can see how the scarf has been attached to the chairs for painting. (And you can see the paint drips from the previous project still on the tiles).

I bought the silk blank including the fringe at Dharma Trading about 5 years ago, and it has sat in my drawer ever since. But once I got going it only took about 5 mins to do! It made a nice scarf for a friend, I hope she enjoys wearing it.

 

And here is the red silk made up, again using the Fave Top pattern (link at the start of this post).

I narrowed the top across the bust, by scooping out around 5-6 cm on each side where the sleeve joins the bodice, and I also shorted the sleeves a little.  I think you can see the difference in the comparison photo below. When using a fabric with body, I think that it is not a bad idea to make the tunic a bit more flattering in making it look slimmer up top. With a really drapey fabric it wouldn’t matter nearly as much.

And 3m of silk shantung, destined to become an evening coat. First wet…

  
  …and then dry.

  
This has been linked to the blogger party RUMS.

 

 

A Dress for Christmas

Isn’t it nice to have a lovely new dress for Christmas? I certainly think so. The only trouble is that this type of dress often only gets worn once or maybe twice and then joins the stack of special occasion outfits languishing in the back of my wardrobe. This is because it is usually too dressy for the office and not quite an evening outfit either. Not that I go out often in the evenings these days, and when I do it seldom requires too much dressing up.

So this year I decided to remake a previous Christmas dress into a new one, so the lovely silk dupioni it was made from would get another outing. Below is my inspiration piece from Amalthee:

Pretty, isn’t it?

My silk was green, not red, but equally suitable for Christmas and a colour closer to my taste, although I have started to quite like dark red of late. But the sleeves had to go. Trumpet sleeves look lovely but are totally impractical for someone who would be doing some last minute food handling and quite a bit of eating as well. Trumpet sleeves dunked into salad dressing and turkey gravy are not very appealing. Besides, in our Australian climate you are very likely to dissolve into a puddle of perspiration in long sleeves and silk ones at that. I considered elbow length, but even that is dicey on a hot day, and anyway, when I checked the leftover fabric at my disposal 3/4 sleeves ceased to be an option. In the end I decided on sleeveless with a shawl worn over the top.

The dress originally had cut on cap sleeves, which weren’t all that comfortable, a round neck and a voluminous swing shape with a hi-lo hemline. I believe the pattern had been a modified Tessuti Lily, which is my go-to pattern for A-line swing dresses. I had extended the shoulders for a sort of cap sleeve effect, not all that expertly I have to admit, and it looks to me as if I increased the width of the skirt at CF and CB too, by tilting the pattern pieces away from the fold, as illustrated in the picture below. (What is marked selvages could equally well be the fold of the fabric, if you did not want a centre seam. With the tilt of the pattern piece the width at the neck remains the same, but volume is added lower down without tacking it on at the sides.) More details about the sewing process can be found here.

But back to my green silk dress. I unpicked the side seams and recut the armscyes based on the Tessuti Eva dress, which I particularly like for a good fit in the shoulders and bust. I considered copying the interesting funnel shaped cowl of Vogue 9112 but in the end I left the round neck as it was, because I had a matching silver and green marble statement necklace I wanted to show off.

The back view of the hi-lo hem was a problem. Such a vast expanse of fabric! I had put a CB seam into the original dress, but even so, the dupioni did not drape much and that made it look enormous.

However, some time ago at a visit to the supermarket, I had seen someone wearing a hi-low tunic with ‘tails’, i.e. the back was split from the waist down. I really liked that look, so I decided to try it with this dress. I also took in some width at the back waist, about 10cm, to stop the CB seam from bulging outward unbecomingly at that point, and give a more fitted shape to the waist and the upper body. Not fitted, just ‘more fitted’. I am hopelessly spoiled by the loose clothing style I have become accustomed to.

Christmas lunch was lovely. A most enjoyable afternoon with our children, grandchildren, and some of our extended family, fun, laughter and good conversation. Even the weather was cooperative for a change, temp in the mid twenties, so not too hot, and sparkling sunshine. Just right to enjoy the view from DD’s back deck down to Chinamans Beach…

 

… and out through the headlands of glorious Sydney Harbour.

The Dance of the Brolgas

I love primitive art and somewhere on the internet I came across a shape resembling a brolga.

Brolgas are a northern Australain crane species and they dance in an exuberant fashion as part of their courting rituals.

(Photo courtesy of abc.net.au)

I also found this fabulous painting by Ros Jenke on her website.

Gosh, she is a terrific painter. She makes me wish I could paint, but that would be flogging a dead horse I fear. Better to stick with my version of art, which is dabbling in block printing right now.

I had a couple of meters of lilac voile left from my excursion into bunny rugs, and the brolga shape seemed quite the thing to turn some fabric and a bit of paint into a dress. I wanted short sleeves and an swing shape, so I merged my favourite 2 Tessuti dresses, the Eva for the bodice top and sleeves, and the Lily for the swing lower down. Below is a picture of the pattern pieces laid onto the fabric for cutting out, with the tilt away from the fold I so often talk about, without being quite sure whether anyone understands what I mean. The tilt adds volume at the CF and CB, getting wider towards the hem. I do this a lot, as I like volume, but not necessarily tacked on at the sides. It gives you a tad of extra room in the bust too and so could be used as a cheater FBA, although I don’t actually need it for that purpose. The photo below shows the back pieces being cut, which I do along the selvages, with a CB seam. The front would be cut on the fold, unless of course I want a CF seam as well.

If you are not too interested in the intricacies of block printing you might want to skip the next few paragraphs and go straight to the photos. My PR review with explanation of the sewing process is here.

Once I had cut out my fabric, I sewed up the CB seam I put in to save fabric, and also sewed up the shoulders. Then I laid it our flat (single layer) for printing., with the sleeve pieces not attached yet. I left the sleeve pieces loose for printing, but had the option of moving them roughly into place on my work surface to simulate where they will eventually go, so I could see how the motif placement would pan out.

The brolga stamp gave me a bit of a headache during the printing process. It is about the size of my hand and a bit unwieldy with the head, wings and feet sticking out everywhere. Not so much of a problem to plonk the stamp on the fabric, but the paint makes it stick and lift up the fabric on removal, and because of its size it is hard to take it off in one smooth action. It is then all to easy to get a bit of paint where you don’t want it.

This made me think that I needed to attach the carved rubber to a rigid backing. A bit of plywood would do the trick, except it doesn’t let me see where I place my motifs. So I picked up some Perspex offcuts at my local Perspex shop to try out with my next print run. I could also use some spray adhesive to stick the fabric to a piece of cardboard underneath. Depending on how it works with the Perspex I might do both.

I already mentioned that paint coverage can be a problem with block prints, and I had already tried sand papering the surface of the stamp to hold more ink, with no appreciable difference. So I thought that maybe using a brayer instead of a foam roller might give me a thicker layer of paint on my stamp. A brayer is a roller with  a rubber surface and the layer of paint sits on top instead of being absorbed by the foam with only minimal paint on the surface. This theory actually worked, there was more paint on the stamp with the brayer, but unfortunately it made the print itself looks a bit smudged and gluggy around the edges. So back to the drawing board. In the end I used a felt roller instead of either foam or rubber, which I think makes my prints looks best. I used the brayer to roll over the stamp to apply pressure to my print, which worked well also. Not sure if pressure with the brayer will still be necessary if I have a rigid backing on my stamp, but it might be.

So after a few gluggy prints at the back of my dress the rest of the printing went well. I confess here and now that the back of a garment concerns me much less than the front, which no doubt is a major failing on my part, but here you have it. So despite my trial prints on paper and scraps of fabric, when I get to the actual garment, I always start printing at the back hem so I can work out any problems before I get to places where they would be too obvious. Or heaven forbid bug me every time I look into the mirror.

Once the printing was done I let the dress and the sleeves dry in the open air and then put it in the dryer on high for another half hour to set the paint. With a thorough ironing once the dress is finished it should be good to wash. I am always a bit worried that I might gunk on a masterpiece before the paint has been set properly, meaning I can’t wash it without spoiling my prints and can’t set the prints without setting the stain as well.

But all went well and here is the result.

This has been linked back to RUMS.

Fun With Adultery

Ha, that made you look, didn’t it? Unfortunately it is entirely false pretenses, as there is nothing salacious in this post. I have not turned to swinging in my dotage, nor is there some scandal to be exposed, if you pardon the pun, among the geriatrics on NSW’s sunny Central Coast.

What I adulterate is patterns, and first up I want to apologise to all you wonderful indie designers who publish very professionally drafted patterns, which no doubt are thoroughly tested before you publish for sale. You don’t deserve my meddling, but that doesn’t mean that I will stop doing it. I can’t draft a pattern to save myself, but I sure can’t help but play around with patterns made by those who can.

A classic example is the Tessuti Lily Linen dress dress. 

  
I have only ever used the sleeveless version, as the sleeves don’t seem to suit my narrow, but very square shoulders, but I sure have made this pattern a lot with every variation I could think of. Let me see:

Maxi length

• 2 in linen
• 1 in cotton interlock
• 1 in a wool double knit
• 1 in a viscose knit
• 2 cotton voile underdresses/slips

Original length

• 1 in cotton with tucks
• 1 in batik
• 1 in cotton sateen as a bubble dress

And that isn’t even mentioning the tunics. You can see that this pattern was $10 extremely well spent. Here are some pics.

This was my first maxi, in a beefy linen, and I was experimenting with the hem. Below is the final version. You turn the sides back at the side seams about 20cm, then have a button and loop arrangement to hold them there. You could just stitch it down, but that makes ironing difficult. You can also wear one side up if you want. The details are here.

Another version of the same, in a linen batik I bought in Bali (for peanuts!).

Next a tucked variation. This is maxi length, but the tucks make it shorter. I also extended the shoulders into cap sleeves. Underneath is another maxi Lily, as an underdress/slip. For details see here.

A bubble dress, achieved by shortening the Lily to 90cm, then drafting a bottom skirt piece from the hem turned upside down. A better explanation is here.

Another maxi version, this time in a knit. I love the hippie vibe, but the dark brown cotton interlock is already fading after a couple of washes. I will need to overdye it if I want to keep wearing it. My TNT t-shirt pattern was used for the bodice part and sleeves.

And finally a tunic tunic version with a cowl.

Oh, and before I forget: I always cut the back of the Lily on the selvages, not on the fold, and do a topstitched CB seam. This not only saves a lot of fabric, but it also gives you a nice vertical line at the back, which is slimming.
Link back to Rums

The Fave Top

I make all my clothes, with the exception of the odd piece of knitwear and some leftovers I still wear from the time when I bought RTW. Working full-time and taking my grandma duties seriously, this is only possible because I use almost exclusively TNT patterns and I have a liking for simple fashion unencumbered by too many details. I don’t even like pockets, as I think they tend to add bulk where it is not wanted and often harbour forgotten tissues which turn into disasters in the wash.

What is a TNT pattern? TNT is not a brand, but an acronym for tried-and-true. I use a small number of patterns that work for me over and over, only very occasionally adding a new one and dropping one that has been overused. All these patterns are simple, suit my body shape and fit into my current preferred style of dressing, which is Lagenlook of the Japanese persuasion. There are other styles of LL, the Edwardian, which is too frilly for me, the Magnolia Pearl which is ditto, and the Scandinavian, which relies on pretty, multicoloured fabrics I sadly don’t have access to. So Japanese it is, which is VERY simple and mostly neutrals, although I break out occasionally under the influence of seasonally induced madness (springtime!), to use some bright and cheerful colours for a change.

One of my staple patterns has been the Tessuti Fave Top and its variations.

So far I have made 2 in silk, 7 in linen including linen knit, one in cotton gauze, one in cotton/silk voile, and 8 in cotton or rayon knits or a mixture thereof. Phew! Why so many?

First of all, I love the pyramid shape and the simple but current style. Simple enough that sewing it up in different fabrics and prints makes it sufficiently different for most non-sewists I come into contact with not to notice that it is the same pattern. (Yes, strange but true!). If the dropped pointy hem wasn’t so much in fashion right now it would be quite another matter, but every second woman out in public seems to be wearing this, so my slew of Fave Tops blend right in.

Then it is an incredibly quick sew, especially when you have made it before. Two pieces, four seams, hems at bottom and sleeves and a bias strip around the neck. I can turn one out from go to woe in 90 minutes. Whenever I feel like sewing but don’t have much time, which is all too often, I go for this pattern.

This is the sort of conversation I tend to have with myself before making yet another one of these tops:

Me: It’s the weekend, time to sew up some of that stash. It’s getting warm enough to wear all that linen I bought on my last trip

Me: Oh goodie, what will you make? There is lots of interesting stuff on your pinterest board you could try.

Me: Weeeell, I don’t have a lot of time and I don’t really want to muck around with developing a new pattern from a pinterest picture. Let’s just do something nice and simple and quick.

Me: Ok, so make that shirt you have been meaning to for a while. You really like the last one you made and if you wait much longer it will be too warm to wear anything with long sleeves.

Me: Mmmm, I want to do a proper cuff and sleeve tab next time and I don’t feel like mucking around with that either right now.

Me: Fair enough. Something without a sleeve tab then.

Me: I think I’ll go for something I can be sure will work. That nice geometric linen was quite expensive, and I can’t get more of it if I mess it up. Something loose and comfy…

Me: Looks like another fave top then. That must be number 6 or 7. Don’t you think people might notice that you wear the same thing over and over?

Me: Nah… different fabric. Nobody will suspect a thing.

And so the Fave Top it is made yet again. Here are pics of some of my versions:

Rayon knit, true to pattern

Silk woven, lengthened, cuffed sleeve

Cotton/Silk voile, lengthened body, shortened cuffed sleeves

Rayon knit, long sleeves

China silk, lengthened body, shortened cuffed sleeves

Crinkle linen, cuffed 3/4 sleeves, lengthened body

You will notice that some of these are really tunics. The leopard print top was the first one I made and I followed the pattern exactly. But like a cook who can’t follow a recipe, I can’t make a pattern more than once before I start to meddle. I don’t like wasting fabric, and I like hiding my rather generous rear, so if I have a bit more than the 1.5m required I will use up what I have and make a tunic.

Below is the idea I followed to lengthen my Fave Tops to tunics. I would LOVE to attribute this, because I think it is such a good idea, but all I can find is the image. It doesn’t seem to be attached to any web page or author. So my apologies for not giving credit where it is due.

My own changes to the pattern are to make the sleeves wider, lengthen them to full length, shorten them to short sleeves usually with cuffs and making the tunic wider at the bottom hem.

I do this by tilting the pattern pieces like in the pic above. The CF still touches the fold of the fabric, otherwise the neck would be too wide, but the bottom of the CF is a good few cms away from the fold, adding width as CF. Of course if you don’t like all this volume you shouldn’t be doing that. With a drapey fabric you probably won’t notice the difference, but with a more substantial linen you will get an exaggerated pyramid shape like this.

Love that shape!

Block Printing on Linen

As mentions in my previous post, my first attempts at block printing with polystyrene and a soldering iron turned out promising, and so I am encouraged to have a go at recreating my inspiration top.

As as you can see, the print on this top consists of several different versions of the leaf — too much trouble for me, because it would mean I would have to create several different printing blocks, one for each variation. Not out of the question when I am going for a masterpiece, but at this stage I am still exploring. I don’t want to spend heaps of time, only to find that I am on the wrong track.

So I decided to restrict myself to a single version of the leaf, but a smaller and more delicate one than I had used previously on my Bloom dress. My reasoning was that a top was a smaller printing surface and I was going to print on white, which I thought didn’t need as much black as the dark purple of the dress to make the desired visual impact.

I carved a polystyrene block with a more ‘gracile’ leaf, two-thirds the size of the previous one, and decided to try it out on paper before tackling fabric. I wanted to get a feel for how to arrange the individual leaf prints to achieve a pleasing overall pattern. The roll of newsprint I use to copy patterns was just the thing for a trial run.

I was very happy with the result, so onwards to the fabric. The paper is not wasted because it can be used for gift wrapping paper later.

I had picked an ivory white linen top as my guinea pig for this project, one that has a pleasing shape, but because it is white it somehow has lead a rather unloved existence in my wardrobe. When I made it, I pictured it as a plain backdrop for some of my statement necklaces, but somehow that idea hasn’t worked. White is too blah, especially since all I have to team it with are black pants and I am a bit bored with the plain white-on-top with black-on-the-bottom combination. I have made exactly the same top in a French blue linen and that one has been a favourite.

But printing on an old sheet is one thing, and on good quality linen constituting a perfectly wearable top is quite another. Did I mention that I was a coward? And that I can’t stand waste, especially not of good quality fabric? Consequently this project was rather nerve-wracking.

The first stage was to unpick the side seams so the top could lie flat for printing. I suppose you could print the top whole with newspaper inside, but newspaper comes in large rectangles and the top doesn’t. You would have to cut the paper to fit, and if you don’t get that exactly right the ink might bleed though and the project could be ruined.

Fortunately the top was made using the Tessuti Fave Top pattern, which means it only had side seams and shoulder seams. Undoing the side seams would allow it to lie down nice and flat.

 

After unpicking I ironed the top before I started printing, to have a nice smooth surface. The paper print had worked really well, but the linen has a rougher surface and I wanted the print to be as clear as possible. Wrinkles in the linen are not a good start. You also need to note that using a polystyrene block does not result in the same solid print as a screen print. The ink application is nowhere near as thick, and the print is textured from the textured surface of the PS. If you need a print with even, opaque paint application, you need to use a stencil or screen.

As with the last project I assembled the following:

Polystyrene printing block, carved with a soldering iron
Foam roller
Plastic plate or ice cream lid to ink up the roller
Permaset screen printing ink (I find Permaset is more colour fast than some other inks I have tried)
paper towels to wipe up any stray ink

If you need information on how to carve your polystyrene block, please see my previous post on fabric printing.

With any printing project, you need to focus. REALLY focus. One little accident or careless misstep can ruin the project. It took me a little over an hour to print this top, and I sweated over possible disasters the whole time. No fumbling with the PS bock and dropping it onto the fabric, no getting ink on my fingers and from there on the fabric, no putting the block in the wrong position because of a lapse of concentration. There is no chance of correction, once the ink hits the fabric it is there for good. You have got to be on your toes.

Happily there were no major disasters, only lots of little irregularities, and the result is a very wearable top. There are a few small smudges and blobs I wish weren’t there, but nothing to spoil the overall look too much..

In the process I did learn a couple of things though that will help me to improve in future.

First with the number of individual prints this top required, inevitably ink will accumulate in the grooves between the print lines. If this happens, the surplus ink has to be wiped off with a paper towel, or it will make the prints messy.

It is not easy to get each row of prints straight, without sloping upwards or downwards as you go along. I used a piece of string, measuring from the hem up to make sure it was straight, as a visual guide.

Even spacing is also difficult. I used my fingers to measure the space between each leaf (three fingers wide on the back, more like two in the front, but that is another story).

If you print from the hem upwards, you will likely run into trouble at the shoulders, because unless you are very lucky there won’t be enough room for a whole motif. You can’t just continue across the shoulder seam, because you don’t want the motif upside down on the other side, do you? I decided the area around my face was more important than the area at the hem, which resulted in too much empty space there. I left it, but if it bothers me I can print part of my leaf around the hem later.

With the paper, I printed the entire piece with half a teaspoon of ink. You need a lot more ink with fabric or the prints will look washed out. Put more ink on your roller at least for each row, and ink the block for each print.

You need to press quite firmly when printing, not just in the middle of your block but everywhere.

The more raised your printing surfaces on your block are away from your non-printing surfaces, the neater your print will be. This is all about getting ink where it is supposed to be, and stopping it from getting where it is not supposed to be.

If you need to move your fabric to print the other side of the top, dry the ink first with a hairdryer. Other wise there could be a risk of a wet print touching the fabric and leaving a mark. If you have a surface big enough to print the whole garment in one go, you don’t need to worry.

And here are some pics pf the finished print:

 

This is what the finished top looks like: