Monday, October 10, 2016

Thermofax Screen Printing - Repeat Printing Part 2

In this post I am going to share how I prepare the fabric for repeat printing. I use either hand dyed fabrics or commercial solid fabric and they are quilting weight cottons.



When using commercial fabrics off the bolt, you need to prewash the fabric so that any sizing or finishes on the fabric surface are removed before adding your printed design. With hand dyed fabric there is no need to prewash since the fabric has already gone through a washing when you dyed it.

Once your fabric is washed and dry, decide how much yardage you want to print with your Thermofax screen design. In my example I am going to print one yard of the hand dyed fabric that is shown on the right, in the photo above.

Next I will sub cut my one yard piece of fabric to accommodate the size of my printed design. But before I cut into my fabric, I need to measure the height of my design.  I place the screen image that I prepared in Part 1 of this series so that the bottom or flat side of the screen is face up. With a ruler, measure the image from top to bottom. My image measures 7 3/4". To this measurement I add one inch so that I have some wiggle room on each side of the design. So my measurement comes to 8 3/4" and this is how wide I will cut pieces from my one yard piece of fabric.


You can cut your fabric or tear your fabric. I like to tear it along the lengthwise grain, so I measure 8 3/4" from the selvage edge and make a small cut and then tear. In the photo below, you can see my one yard piece of fabric sub cut into 8 3/4" widths. My selvages are on the right and left side in the photo. I ended up with a small strip around 4" and I will just store that until I find a project to use it in. You can also use this strip to test printing ink colors.


Typically when I screen print with my large silk screens, I am preparing more fabric than a one yard piece. I usually work in lengths of 7.5 yards and sub cuts of 18" to 21". 

Next I baste my fabrics together on the short ends so that I have a continuous feed of fabric as I'm printing. 


Using the longest straight stitch on my sewing machine, I stitch the ends together on the four pieces of fabric so they will be one long piece when printing.

I like to roll my fabric onto a cardboard tube and to do that I tape one end of the fabric to the tube with painter's tape. I have the fabric spread out in front of the tube on my ironing surface and I iron and roll the fabric all at this time.


I iron as much fabric as I can reach, then roll that amount onto the tube, and repeat until all the fabric is rolled up.



I don't worry if the fabric rolls a bit unevenly onto the tube, as I have found this really doesn't affect anything. If you don't have a cardboard tube, you can pool your fabric into a box or laundry basket and feed it out of that when printing. Ideally the cardboard tube should be a few inches wider than the width of your fabric.

You may be wondering why I sub cut the yard of fabric instead of just printing on it as one whole piece. I have tried repeat printing on fabric yardage that was not sub cut and I found the process to be much more complex and time consuming (mostly during the actual printing time). I find that the method I use today (sub cutting the fabric) is much more enjoyable and I don't usually need fabric pieces that are larger than this for the sewing projects I typically do. Also, sometimes I am screen printing with large silk screens so my fabric is usually around 18" to 21" wide by 7.5 yards long. So I am able to get some larger fabric pieces if I need them. I find that repeat printing with Thermofax screens offers me more design options on a smaller scale.

Our fabric is now ready to print on. Up next in this series I will talk about setting up to print.


21 comments:

  1. Love this practical advice on how to print strips of continuous fabrics. Thanks for the great photos.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great instructions - like too using things we all have in our house. Not too expensive to do either and all original designs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rolling the fabric is a brilliant idea. I just let the yardage hang off the ironing board and it just gets wonky!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for this info on thermofax screen printing. I would love to try it but haven't started. I look forward to learning more from your posts. Gayle

    aquiltersplayhouse at gmail dot com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for all the great tips! mumbird3(at)gmail(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great information! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ooh! Must have a go at this. I love printing my own fabrics but have not done any large pieces. Thank you for sharing xx

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sub-cutting--the answer to so many problems! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  9. You have made this process look easy and effortless. I love your printed designs!
    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  10. The cutting of the fabric before printing with a small screen looks so much easier than trying to move around a large piece of fabric. Thank you for this tip.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Loved seeing how this is done. What a lot of work but just beautiful . Thanks for sharing your process

    ReplyDelete
  12. I have been enjoying reading your blog for some years now. I find it very instructive. This is a technique I would very much like to try for myself.

    ReplyDelete
  13. following along with interest. Great idea for keeping ironed lengths.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you - a lot of helpful tips!

    ReplyDelete
  15. What a great way to roll your fabric for printing. Got to save those paper towle and toilet paper rolls.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Great rolling idea that I just might steal, lol --errrr borrow. Yes, borrow. heheheh I love the shade variations achieved. Looking forward to learning more.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Definitely an intriguing process! Mary Ann

    ReplyDelete
  18. I like how you explain your process with simplicity! Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thanks for the details. This looks like so much fun.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Thank you for your excellent, clearly written instructions. I have always used thickened dyes for thermofax printing. What are the advantages to using ink?

    ReplyDelete
  21. Excellent presentation of your process!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for coming by and leaving us a message! We love hearing from you!