Devore Printing

In todays workshop the class was given several pieces of fabric. Firstly we had to name each fabric then put the fabrics into piles of cotton, silk and muslin. Once we had done this we had to pic out the light velvet piece of fabric as this is what we was going to use to do our devore printing on.

Devore Printing
This method includes burning away natural fibres of a mixed fibre cloth using a chemical substance. This leaves synthetic backing that results in a relief effect.

The light velvet piece of fabric is a specialist devore fabric that allows the devore paste to be applied onto the fabric without damaging it. The devore paste will most likely be mixed by the print technician, in my case Sharron mixed the paste for our class to use. Before applying the paste onto the fabric we made sure our work area was clean so that no previous substances used in the textile workshop ruined our fabric. Moreover we had to make sure the fabric we where using where not creased as this could prevent the paste from covering the areas that we initially want to cover. After this we taped our fabric down onto the work surface using masking tape.

Firstly we placed our screens over our fabric, applying the devore paste on the screen. After blobbing the right amount of paste onto the screen, we then used a squeegee blade to cover the screen so that it copied the print onto the fabric. We then removed the screen and scrapped the excess paste back into the mixing pot, then we washed our screens along with the squeegee as we did not want to block our screens. Once the screens where clean we had to place them in the drying cupboard for about 15 minutes. The fabric was left hanging to dry naturally to allow the paste to penetrate the fibres. Once the fabric was dry we then needed the paste to fix. to do this we hear pressed our fabric for 17 seconds at 180 degrees. We then took our fabric straight to the sink, washing and gently rubbing it under running water. Gently rubbing the fabrics together removes all the loose fibres eh oh remain on the fabric. We then left it to dry, laying it on a piece of newspaper print Ontario drying rack.