The Printing Process

A PEEK BEHIND-THE-SCENES  

Each design starts either with a sketch on paper or a photograph.

I love using a combination of photography and illustration to create graphics my hand could never draw—here I've taken the organically shaped dots from a feather and am organizing them.

I ended up making two versions designs with these dots—one stayed in tidy lines, the other got mixed into a polka dot-esque layout.

It takes a lot of mixing and testing to find the right shades to go with each fabric color.

Once the design is ready, I expose it onto a screen set it up for printing.

For a two color print, I create two screens, one for each color and line them up so they print on top of each other.

I do small runs of a pattern & color combo and let them air dry before putting them under a high-powered heater for three minutes to set the ink into the fibers of the fabric.

And then it's time to clean up! The screens can be used several times and the ink washes off very easily.