yardage printing

Last Wednesday night I dragged J along with me to an "Openhaus" at Screenhaus screenprinters. Steve from Screenhaus sent me an invitation last month to come to one of their new open nights:

"... designed for designers, production managers, cutters, makers, upholsterers and students - we aim to open the door for anyone interested in printing yardage - showing everything from design, film, screens to actual print demonstrations."

It was really interesting, we got to see most of the process including the actual printing at the end (sorry about the photo quality, taken on my phone). Steve and others were really nice and approachable and answered every question. And we got a goody bag at the end.

This is one of the only places in Sydney left where small players can get yardage printed. And if you are interested in attending (they had wine and sushi!) it is a really interesting night. I recommend it. (And J was fascinated, he loved it :-)

ribbons

I've done it! I finally ordered some fabric from Spoonflower today — fat quarters of the two designs above, the turquoise spots I showed before and a new simple woven ribbons pattern which I dreamed up yesterday, literally, it came to me as I woke up :-)
They share a limited colour palette, chosen from 'in gamut' colours on the downloadable Illustrator palette available from Spoonflower here. The designs were drawn in Illustrator which made it easier to get everything exact and I found a great tutorial for making pattern repeats in Illustrator which makes it easy to preview your repeats and make sure they work (important that!)
Once I get my samples safely back (and make sure they work!) I'm going to post my own simple tutorial which will share the technical aspects of preparing a design repeat in Illustrator and saving it in Photoshop to meet the Spoonflower specifications. It took me a while to work it all out and I'd like to share what I learnt along the way.
And now I have the technical stuff clear in my brain I'm looking forward to preparing some new patterns that I've been playing with. I really want to make my Chrysanthemums design into a repeat, using the fabulous blue colour of my tea towel prints.

PG-11 Gocco registration tutorial

I always love tutorials which explain techniques and tools, so with that in mind I thought I'd post this tute, for all those new Gocco converts out there trying to work out how to use the registration features of the PG-11, and for the people trying to work out which machine to buy.
These photos are from my first try at two colour printing. I'd only exposed one screen before this!

In this first photo I have printed the first colour, ruby red for the body of the shoes, and I've exposed and inked up the second colour screen (of a black outline). Clicking in the registration plate I then print an image of my screen on it. (Rumour has it you can remove the blue protective film but I haven't been brave enough yet!)

Once I have the second colour image printed on the registration plate I can slide a printed card beneath the clear plate and try and align it with the second colour. (I'm using misprints so that any mistakes aren't a problem.)

You can see the locking mechanism (the two black knobs below the printing plate) are in the unlocked, down position and I can then move the printing plate (the cushioned platform the prints sit on) around to align the second colour over the first. It is the first colour printed card that moves around to align, not the second colour.
Once I'm happy with the registration I lock these knobs by putting them in the up postion, remove the blue plastic registration plate and start printing.
The photo below shows the final result from my second printing, once I got the hang of it this was such a quick and easy job. These Ruby Slippers cards have been really popular but I have a few left in my Etsy Shop. If anyone has questions, suggestions or corrections just leave a comment below and I'll respond.