HEAT TRANSFER PRINTING

Last week in our textiles lessons we looked at heat transfer printing some of our pattern design ideas onto fabrics as experiments for my final collection of dress/furnishing fabrics inspired by the theme of plants.

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BEFORE

In order to do this, we first painted our design onto thin layout/transfer paper using transfer ink paints. I found that these paints were quite a thick consistancy to work with, building up the colour as you go. I painted sections of my pattern design ideas from my sketchbook on the theme of plants in a range of colours inc. reds, blues and greens, etc.

AFTER....

In order to finally transfer the painted design onto fabric, the transfer paper design was placed face-down ontop of a thin, silky polester fabric and an iron/heat pressed over the top for a certain amount of time. The result was a beautiful and vibrant pattern design printed onto fabric.

I really enjoyed this technique and feel that the results produced came out really well! I found that some colours tened to come out a lot better than others and therefore more layers of paint were perhaps required in places, however I really love the vibrant and playful designs created that I could them go on to link into my final dress/furnishing fabrics collection.