FINALISED PRINTS

Once again I am awake thinking about my collection. I find it hard to get to sleep at the best of times so at the moment Im finding it seemingly impossible what with the endless list of tasks i have to complete by the end of this week circulating round and around in my mind. I have however made another step forward with the finalisation of my print choices. After endless nights playing around with colour and scale i now have 6 slightly different variations of my print which will be made up into a dress, pairs of leggings a top and the linings of jackets etc. 

There has been an on going saga at uni the past few weeks with the printing facilities and technicians. Introduced this year was the digital fabric printing machine which is an amazing facitilty to take advantage of, making the cost of printing a hell of a lot cheaper saving some of us a couple of hundred pounds! The disadvantage of it being new is tutors are still yet to learn the ropes properly and problems have occurred, including the print technician telling us a few days ago printing on jersey wasnt going to be an option on the printer as the stretch made it too difficult. Of course almost all of us wanted some sort of jersey so we were not impressed at the delayed announcemnt that this would not be possible as it is too difficult. After a day or two of panicking trying to find a company to print it in time for our deadline, and the money to fund the printing in the first place, lucking a solution was found!

There are two different ways of digital printing onto fabric one is the printer laser printing the ink directly onto the fabric which has to be a specially coated fabric. The second and cheaper option is whats called dye sub, to print using the same machine onto a transfer paper which then goes through a huge heated roller along with a pollyester fabric, once pressed through the heat reacts with the dye on the transfer paper and the fabric soaks up the ink leaving you with a really great quality print. Quite impressive really. Anyway a girl on the course managed to find a lycra that wasn't cheap and shiny and was suitable for the Dye sub which printed really nicely when tested. So with that we sent two people off to go and collect i think 40 meters of this fabric to solve our problem and save us money. So all being well this week i will have my prints. I hope to God i do anyway.