Its all about the fur

The March Hares shirt shall be 'digitally printed' using a large printer at our university. The printer works on the basis of reaction and needs natural fabrics which are painted in a special coating. I have found that as my printed material shall become a shirt, cotton is the best material to go for. I found my material at:

http://www.whaleys-bradford.ltd.uk/fabrics/section-s-coated-fabrics-for-digital-printing?p=3.

What needs to be remembered is that the machine the fabric goes through needs to have a constant tension, so when ordering material always add an extra meter. The fabric's width cannot extend larger than 150cm, otherwise it shall not fit through the machine, however you can print as many meters as you wish through length ways. Most manufacturers print several hundred meters for large scale projects.

When preparing the image to be printed on the fabric, I have found that working on a smaller tile (10cm by 10cm) my image can be reproduced throughout the fabric and has become quicker to load. I took the fabric for the March Hare breeches and scanned in the fabric through a flat bed scanner. Once this was done i made up a 10cm by 10 cm tile and cropped the image until it fit. What I like is that the fur has a tufty appearance to it which fits in well with the March Hares characteristics. When saving the file I was advised using a TIFF file at 200-300 DPI was best as it allows larger files to be saved into a more compressed means.

Once the fabric has been printed it must be allowed to dry and then rolled in hessian. Once rolled it needs to be placed into a steam cupboard for a minimum of 40 mins to allow the dye to fix. Once the time is up, unroll the material and wash with luke warm water. DO NOT USE DETERGENT.

I have booked a slot for my material to be printed on 7th May. This shall allow me enough time to make the shirt and add the detailing. Below is my tile design ready for printing.