Screen Printing

My screen was not that big so I could use the carosoule. The carosoule is usually used for printing t-shirts becuase you can lay them out on the 4 paddles (which are flat rotating disks) and simply pull the screen down and print. It is simple, quick and set-up friendly.

I used one screen for all the designs to save on materials which meant that I needed to block out the areas that I would not be printing. You do this with clear packaging tape and acetate.

To print you add a blob of your ready-mix dye and push/pull the dye through with a squeegee. Depending on the detail of your design the angle that you pull the squeegee and the number of pulls varies.

I pulled through three of four times at a very upright angle in order to achieve the fine detail needed especially for the ‘Little Treasures, Every Day’ design.

One at a time the coffee clutch designs emerged.

The dye is set either by putting it into that huge tumble dryer you can see behind me or by fiercely ironing. Now all I had to do was to iron the coffee jute sack backing into the printed fabric and sew.