Here is the label printed in Quilting Arts and the photo of the Arno River and bridge is on the front of the quilt.

There are always loads of technical questions when it comes to printing on fabric!  Some of the questions being things like what the differences are between the types of setting chemicals and pretreated, prepared sheets, which leads to ink types and printer preferences.   Today I found a wonderful blog post on a fellow quilt artist’s blog about her experiences, old samples, preferences and technical info.  I think she did a fabulous job giving concise information and lots of it!  So I will refer you here to Gloria Hansen’s post.

I even learned a couple of things due to her working many years back on developing ways to make printer inks waterfast and lightfast before Bubble Jet Set was on the market.  I also began printing on fabric before Bubble Jet Set, but had little dye experience and was not dyeing my own fabrics then.  I used Retayne, and would probably still be doing so if Epson hadn’t developed wonderful pigmented inks which don’t need chemical setting and brought them into the home printers.

I have a love/hate relationship with my Epson R1800, but still plan to buy another Epson.  I have my eye on a newer model that I hope to get soon which will hopefully do something I have been wanting mine to be able to do, but is very limited in that capability.  It is a medium format (13″ wide) pigment based inkjet.  I have always said it needs a special button that says “Print anyway, Damn It!”  The printer wants paper to be perfectly aligned and will adjust the paper if it detects it is not perfectly aligned.  Unfortunately fabric does not have a perfect edge, hence it more often rejects my fabric than to accept it.  It has unfortunately taken too many hours to get it to print what should have taken less than an hour.  It prints beautifully and makes me so happy when it prints in an accepting manner!

Here is another label.  This one is a photo I took in Venice of gondole and was the photo used to make an original painted collage that was then printed on fabric and again painted.

I will have to do another post on how I print my labels in the future.

Looking at the Venetian photo above, I must end with,

Ciao, tutti!

I have been working on surface design with rust for a few years, but have stepped up my interest over the last year.  I was wanting to come up with ways to mimic specific patterns and hit a road block.  I took photos of rusty grain bins, signage, and other grange equipment and wanted some companion fabrics. 

So, I made thermofax screens from the photos.

I used iron in print paste and thermofax screens and I was off getting great companion fabrics! 

I am working with resists and iron powder now and also getting wonderful results.  I am also working on a huge piece of fabric using our fire pit cover to rust since it has wonderful patterning.  More on this piece later.  As the rusting is just the first layer of surface design.

I am so proud to say that I have had some pieces printed in both magazines through their reader challenges and swaps.  After many trials and tribulations I came up with a technique to print with rust using thermofax screens and it is now published!  I hope you will check out the magazine.  It is out for subscribers now, but will hit newsstands for the Oct/Nov 2013 issue.  I hope to have another rusting article printed.  You can see the quilt, Wrangled Rust, that I made for the article here.

Quilting Arts has expanded and pushed me to try so many new things.  I enjoy doing their reader challenges because they are small pieces that you can experiment with new techniques.  Their challenges have led me to many things I would not have pushed myself to try under normal circumstances.  Thank you Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors!