Texilac Experiments

Texilac binder screen printed on the back of silk in geometric dot design.

Printing using texilac in this particular design on the back of silk gave a ruched effect. This was an unexpected outcome. Although this is interesting, it's not something that I want to use in my collection.

I then printed with texilac binder in a hexagon design on the back of digitally printed velvet. It had the desired effect in terms of having a strong line quality and very little ruching, however the fabric did gather at the edges.

The next stage of my experimentation with texilac was to produce a screen of heaxagons which are gradually decreasing in size, with much thinner lines than my previous screen to prevent ruching) 

From left: Decreasing by three quarters, decreasing by half then three quarters.

The fabric on the left is the effect that I want to achieve. The next stage will be a case of enlarging the design so that it can be printed on my 140cm by 1m digitally printed velvet without changing the size of the lines. 

Go big!

As I'm starting to finalize my ideas and come to decisions about fabrics for my collection,  I decided to face my fear of producing large fabrics and produce something really big (1m by 140m). It made sense to produce my final fabrics sooner rather than later as I intend to incorporate heavy embellishment into my fabrics which will be a very lengthy process.

I have produced two samples with the same print - one in velvet, the other in silk viscose. Originally I intended to lazer cut a geometric shape out of the velvet, and glue sheet this onto the silk viscose. This would be applique, but with exquisite line quality. True to form, I have had a change of plan since then.

Embellishment Development!

My early embellishments are shown above.

1. The very first embellished piece that I created - Hand printed silk sewn onto organza, embellished with synthetic yarns and heat pressed sequins.

2 & 3. Further development of embellishment - Layered up sample of digitally printed silk viscose (bottom layer) and organza sewn onto acid dyed silk viscose with devore and discharge technique, embellished with lambs wool and synthetic yarns.

Throughout the duration of my project, the key embellishment ideas have been as follows: 

- Layered fabrics
- Contrasting textures
-Transition from one fabric to another 
-Dense areas fading to nothing


As shown below, my prints and colour palette have developed since the early stages of my project. I have also adopted the use of indigo dye with the intention of creating a blue as rich as possible. I have acid dyed the wool so that it fits in with my colour palette. I intend to recreate the fabric below (with some slight changes) to use as one of my collection pieces.

Photoshop image of digital print and digitally printed silk viscose with devore technique, indigo dip dyed and sewn onto indigo dyed organza with heavy acid dyed wool embellishment and sequins heat pressed and folded in half to give three dimensional effect.