Patterns by Hand: Block Print Your Design onto Textiles

1. Introduction: My name is Amelie Mancini. I'm a painter, designer, and print maker. Today, I run a studio with team of three people. We are basically printing on fabric and leather, then cutting it, and sewing it into tea towels, napkins, pouches, and larger bags. We have managed to basically keep the whole production in-house and do everything in the studio. So, that's what I do. Today, we're going to learn how to create a stamp that we're going to use to, then, print onto different surfaces. It could be paper, it can be fabric, leather, it can be really anything you want. This class is going to teach you how to do that by using a simple tile design, transferring that onto a rubber pad and yeah, learning how to print it. The idea is that, you can either design your own customized pattern to use for project later on, or you can just take something that's already done like a napkin or a T-shirt or a tote bag. So, it's a really cool way to basically customize any product that you might already have at home, make it your own and then, just apply your pattern on to that object. 2. Materials: So, this class will teach you how to carve a stamp for block printing, and there is another class that I taught that taught you how to create a tile to create a repeat pattern. So, feel free to use that design for this, or you can create a different design, you can use just a standalone image that you'll just repeat, or you can work with the tile design as well. So, for this class, you will need a pencil, a piece of vellum paper. You will need an exacto knife. You'll need a rubber pad that you can buy different sizes and different consistencies. I think it's called the speedy-cut from Speedball. It's very easy to carve. You will need a gouge with probably different kinds of blades, but that's up to you and to the design you're using. You will need some superglue. You'll need a roller to roll out your ink, and then the ink, so it's block printing ink, you can get fabric or paper ink depending on your project. So I have some fabric ink here, and then you can also use an inking pad instead. This works really well on paper, and I know that they have some that also works on fabric so you can also get that. Then, this is optional, but I like to glue my rubber stamp on to a square of plexiglass just to make it easier to print. I tend to get ink on my fingers. You don't have to use this. But if you want to, this is available at hardware stores. You can just get it cut to whatever size you need. Then, you will need just a bunch of material to print on. So here I have a napkin. It's linen cotton. I have some felts, some suede, some leather, and then scrap fabric, but it can be anything you want. You can print on notebooks. You can print on wrapping paper. Really anything you want. Just make sure you have the appropriate ink for the material you're printing on. 3. Drawing & Carving Your Stamp: So, I'm going to create a stamp that's going to be square and it's going to be two inches by two inches. I'm going to draw that out onto this piece of vellum and then use that transfer it on to the pad. So, I'm going to start by drawing just a square, so two by two. I'm just keeping it small because of the size of the pad that I have, the size of my plexiglass and then also the size of my inking pad. I mean generally speaking stamps are easier to handle when they're not huge, but you could definitely do by three-by-three probably, that would be fine. Also I should say I'm using a rubber but if you're familiar with linocut carving or wood cuts, and you've done before and that's what you like to use, that's fine. This is an example of a linocut, so it's bigger but it's already melted on something, so that's the reason why I'm putting this piece of plexiglass onto the rubber, just to make it easier to print. So, that's also an option, you can go a little bit bigger. So, the idea is to keep the design fairly simple because this tile will basically, we're going to repeat it onto our material so it will create some cool pattern just by putting it next to each other, and repeating it. I'm going to just draw some shapes on this triangle and then two circles, like this. And so when you're drawing your design onto the vellum, you have to keep in mind that whatever you're coloring in now is what is going to be printed later. So, you're going to be carving out all of the white areas. So, the black is what I'm keeping. Once you have your design, you're going to need to cut your rubber pad to the size of your design. So, we did two by two, so I'm going to trim this, and then using your exacto knife, you're going to just cut through the rubber. So, this is really soft, you don't need to press really hard. You can just softly go over it, here you go. The next step is to take your piece of vellum with your design on it, and you're going to apply it to the rubber stamp, face down. So, you want the pencil to touch the rubber, and then once you do that, then you just rub it, just be careful not to move the velum when you're doing this, this is one of the tricky part, and then you lift it to make sure that the design has been transferred, and then remove it, and then you're, basically the pencil lines are going to be transferred on your rubber. The next step is to carve it, so you are going to use these gauges and you're going to carve out whatever is white. So, in this stamp, it's a lot of areas are actually white. So, I might decide to not carve out the entire area, that's something that you can decide as you're carving, a good rule is to not get too carried away because once it's carved, once it's gone it's gone, you can't put it back on. All right, so I'm going to start here, I'm going to go around these lines. You don't need to put a lot of force, you can start with the smaller blade and go around your design, and then use the wider blade to remove more material. You don't need to go too deep, you can just take out the top layer, and it's better to rotate your, your rubber pad, so that you're always carving away instead of turning the blade and then you might stub yourself, which will be sad. So, here, as I'm carving this, I'm actually realizing that I'm going to leave this, I don't want to take it out completely because I think if I do take it out, it will be just too much empty space, so I'm deciding to leave it. So that's something that you can do as you're carving, you can stop and look at it and say is this enough? Is this too much? If it's too much then, you have to start over, but you can say, okay I'm actually, I'm not going to take out anymore material, I think this is good now, so I'm just going to stop now. Yeah, so once you get to a stage where you're happy with the way it looks, you are going to glue it onto the plexiglass just for, to give it more support but you don't have to do that, you can also just decide to print it like this. I'm going to take some glue and put a few dots in the back here, and then just center it here, press it down. Wait a few seconds for it to dry. 4. Printing on Fabric: So, the next step is going to get your material ready for printing. So, whatever you're going to print, just lay it flat. So, we're going to do, we're going to print a napkin. So, I'm going to just lay it flat on my table, I'm going to do that the top like this. So, I'm going to put a piece of tape. Just to use as a guide. So, I don't want to start at the edge, I want to start a little bit off here and then you do the same thing on the sides. So, this is up to you to just decide how much you want to print. Here, I want to do basically just the top half of my napkin. So, I know that my tile is two-by-two, I'm going to measure it to make sure that it repeats. So, I actually have to move the tape a little bit. So, my napkin is about 16 inches wide and so I'm going to print 14 inches. So, I'm going to mark where it starts and where it ends, and then I'm going to draw a mark every two inches because that's where my tile is going to be. Okay, and then same thing for the sides. So by doing this, I'm basically just creating a grid in which I will print my tile. Okay. So, before you go ahead and print directly on your piece of fabric, you want to test this to make sure that it's good. So, just grab a piece of scrap paper, you're going to roll out some ink onto a tray. You take your roller and spread the ink on your tray. Don't put too much, you want it to be fairly thin and evenly on your roller and then just apply a thin layer and then you just press it down onto your paper and then lift it. Then you can decide actually, I think it's too dark, I want to carve out some more or add some elements or if you're happy with it then just keep going. So, that's the idea to just roll some ink and then just print it in a grid. So, I'm going to start with the top left corner. So, very carefully, I'm going to apply this to the fabric. I'm going to press down and lift it up and then just repeat that. When you're printing, there's never going to be the same exact pressure or engage on your stamp so there's going to be variations. So, then for the second one, I'm putting it right next to the first one lining it up, pressing down and lifting it and then just roll it. So, every now and then you are going to be refilling your ink and also you might get some on your fingers so, just make sure you keep your finger is clean. Then for the next row, I'm going to switch the direction of the stamp just to create a cool pattern. So, I'm going to switch it and turn it 45 degrees. Then the third row, I'm going to go back to the top one but I'm going to reverse it. So, you want to give it a couple of minutes and for the ink to dry and then once it's dry you can remove the tape. Then for fabric usually, they tell you, you have to heat set the ink. So, this one I think you have to just iron it. So, you make sure do that before you wash it. Yeah. 5. Printing on Paper: So, instead of using ink from a tube, you can also just use an inking pad. It's just a little bit easier to use because you just need this, you don't need the roller, and the tray, and everything. This works great on paper and I know they also have inking pads with ink that will work on fabric, so just make sure that you get the right one for your project. Just take your stamp, ink it and just make sure that you're covering it well with ink, and then I'm going to print a sheet of wrapping paper. I'm going to start on the top left corner and just go the whole thing. I'm not going to use the tape to mark where the tile is going. Here, I'm going to change it, I'm going to do up and down up and down. That's it. There you go. Then to clean up your stamp, you just use some water and soap. That's it. 6. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: