Screen Printing

Ever wondered how print gets on to fabric??? Keep reading then.

My first big project as a second year fashion student is to design and make a male and female garment for the 2016 Fairview Racing event fashion show taking place in May this year. Part of our brief is to do screen printing that we are going to use in our garment with the theme: FLOWERS!

We had to design our own print

This is my print design that i hand drew and scanned onto the computer to copy more to create a repeat design inspired by a flower that i will speak about in a next blog about my inspiration for this project.

 

And now the screen printing process starts

1st we had to pick a screen 

Then we wash it with a stripper to get any left over print off

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The red print you see is called a ghost image, that is when print paste stained the screen, which will not have any affect on your print. We also spray the screens clean with a high pressure hose, its quite heavy and hurts your arm after a while.

When i finished cleaning my screen i placed it outside next to the other screens and waited for it to dry.

As soon as my screen was dry i took it to the dark room (its not that dark in there ) and we had to coat our screens with photosensitive emulsion. The emulsion cannot leave the dark room because off its sensitivity to light. We had some lovely team work in the dark room to prevent the screen from slipping.

After its coated we left it in racks to dry overnight(mine is right at the top).

So while i was waiting for the emulsion to dry i went to go print out my design on tracing paper.

As soon is the emulsion is dry (a day later) the tracing paper is placed on the screen with magic tape.

Then you place your screen inside a vacuum light table to expose your screen with a strong light. This allows your print to go onto the screen, and then you leave it in there for ten minutes.

After 10 minutes the screen is ready to go get another wash. This allows the image to wash out on the screen.

As you can see now the print is on my screen, and yes i took off the tracing paper print. As soon as the screen is dry i can start the fun part, printing!

I am printing silver print paste onto white school-text material.

Yep, i had print paste all over me, not that i’m messy, i just really like the color! And well now that the print paste is mixed, i’m ready to get to the fun stuff. PRINTING!

Now you place your screen onto the material, and apply your print paste on to the screen. Because the screen is so huge you need help.

Now you use a squeegee (The thing i’m holding in the picture above) to pull the print paste over the screen, to allow the paste to go through onto your material. When that’s done you take your screen off and you will have your print design.

And that’s it.

Thanks for reading my blog about my screen printing week.

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