Types of textile Printing
Saturday, 11 December 2010 18:26 administrator
Hand Printing Block Printing Screen Printing Spray Printing Kalamkari Batik Discharge Printing Tie and Dye
Hand Printing :
This process, though considered by some to be the most artistic, is the earliest, simplest and slowest of all methods of printing.
In this process, a design is drawn upon, or transferred to, a prepared wooden block. A separate block is required for each distinct colour in the design.
A blockcutter carves out the wood around the heavier masses first, leaving the finer and more delicate work until the last so as to avoid any risk of injuring it during the cutting of the coarser parts. When finished, the block presents the appearance of flat relief carving, with the design standing out.
Fine details are very difficult to cut in wood, and, even when successfully cut, wear down very rapidly or break off in printing. They are therefore almost invariably built up in strips of brass or copper, bent to shape and driven edgewise into the flat surface of the block. This method is known as coppering.
To print the design on the fabric, the printer applies color to the block and presses it firmly and steadily on the cloth, ensuring a good impression by striking it smartly on the back with a wooden mallet. The second impression is made in the same way, the printer taking care to see that it fits exactly to the first, a point which he can make sure of by means of the pins with which the blocks are provided at each corner and which are arranged in such a way that when those at the right side or at the top of the block fall upon those at the left side or the bottom of the previous impression the two printings join up exactly and continue the pattern without a break. Each succeeding impression is made in precisely the same manner until the length of cloth is fully printed. When this is done it is wound over the drying rollers, thus bringing forward a fresh length to be treated similarly.
If the pattern contains several colours the cloth is usually first printed throughout with one, then dried, and printed with the second, the same operations being repeated until all the colours are printed.
Block printing by hand is a slow process it is, however, capable of yielding highly artistic results, some of which are unobtainable by any other method.
Block Printing :
It is as same as hand Printing
Screen Printing
Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a
woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a
substrate. A
roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.
Spray Printing
Spray painting refers to painting using a device that sprays the paint.
A basic spray painting system consists of a conventional spray painting gun, a pressurized paint container, a compressed air system, and flexible tubes connecting them all together. This type of system has transfer efficiency ranging between 20% and 50%. Improper setup and painting techniques will increase the amount of paint used and cost involved.
There are several different technologies for doing this
- Canned spray paint
The most common type in the consumer market is an aerosol can of spray paint.
- Semi-professional spraypainting
There are a variety of hand-held paint sprayers that either combine the paint with air, or convert the paint to tiny droplets and accelerate these out from a nozzle.
- Professional spraypainting
Automobile body shops use air compressors and specialized equipment to spray paint onto a car body. This can be expensive, with a high-quality car paint job costing from $2000 to $5000. The high cost is due to the high quality paints, the laborious nature of surface preparations, and the cost of the equipment to do this task.
Kalamkari :
The kalamkari, handpainted cloths of Sri Kalahasti, Andra Pradesh, works of art drawn entirely by hand, were originally created predominantly for the temples as narrative murals.
These murals tell the stories of the great Hindu epics in picture form. Earlier this century, Christian missionaries commissioned artists to create murals telling the story of Christ.
In addition to the epic murals, the Tree of Life theme is very popular and comes in many forms. Artists are also branching out and using the medium for their purpose.
Kalamkari is an exquisite ancient craft of painted and printed fabrics. It derives its name from Kalam meaning Pen, and Kari meaning work, literally Pen-work. It includes hand painting as well as block printing with vegetable dyes. Kalamkari art has evolved through trial and error over the last 3000 years. Techniques of craftsmanship in Kalamkari were handed down within the families from generation to generation.
The Kalamkari art of painting undergoes a laborious, slow process of resist - dyeing and hand printing. Many stages have to be undergone before the final results are achieved. Unlike other styles of painting, Kalamkari painting demands a lot of treatment before and after the painting is completed on the cotton fabric. Depending on the treatment of cloth, or quality of the mordant, the colors change accordingly. Every step from soaking of the cloth, to sketching the outlines to washing and drying the cloth, is done carefully and correctly.
The world over, people are turning away from dangerous chemical dyes. The harmless, naturally dyed fabrics is used for Kalamkari paintings. The artists believe in using natural dyes, extracted from bark, flower and root. One would be stunned to know that the colour red is obtained by using the Indian madder root, yellow from the pomegranate seed or even mango bark, and black from myrobalam fruit. No chemical dyes are used is producing kalamkari colours!
The process used for both schools of Kalamkari painting is more or less the same. The only major difference is that Srikalahasti paintings depend entirely on the brush-like pen whereas the Masulipatnam style uses block-printing procedures. The process done in Srikalahasti is more tedious. The cloth is treated and washed twice, and is painted with alum for two to three times.
Stages
- Whitening the cloth by immersing in a solution of goat or cow dung and letting it dry in the Sun for a few days.
- The cloth is then treated in Myrobalan solution. Ripe fruits are used in Masulipatnam, raw ones in Srikalahasti. Milk is then added to the solution to prevent the colour from spreading in the next step.
- Then iron acetate solution is filled in, either for solid spaces or as outlines, with a brush-pen in Srikalahasti, and wooden blocks in Masulipatnam.
- All the areas meant to be red are painted or printed over with the alum solution as a mordant. Mordant is a substance that fixes the natural dye on the material.
- After applying alum, the cloth is kept for at least 24 hours. Then the excess mordant is removed by washing the cloth under flowing water.
- The dyeing is done for the red colour by boiling with the red coloring materials.
- All the portions that are not to be blue are covered with wax.
- The waxed cloth is immersed in indigo solution. In Srikalahasti, the blue is painted with the kalam. Then the wax is removed by boiling the cloth in water.
- The yellow is painted on to produce yellow and green.
- The cloth is finally washed again and dried before the final colours emerge.
Batik :
he term "Batik" is an Indonesian-Malay word (Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malay are the official languages of Indonesia and Malaysia and are linguistically similar).
Batik has come to be used as a generic term which refers to the process of dyeing fabric by making use of a resist technique; covering areas of cloth with a dye-resistant substance to prevent them absorbing colors. The technique is thought to be over a thousand years old and historical evidence demonstrates that cloth decorated with this resist technique was in use in the early centuries AD in Africa, the Middle East and in several places in Asia. Although there is no sure explanation as to where batik first was "invented", many observers believe that it was brought to Asia by travelers from the Indian subcontinent.
Despite the fact that batik may have originated elsewhere, most observers believe that batik has reached its highest artistic expression in Indonesia, particularly in Java. The art of Batik was later spread to the rest of the Indonesian archipelago and to the Malay Peninsula where the popularity of the cloth led to the establishment of many other production centers. Batik has become a very central means of artistic expression for many of the areas of Asia and a deeply integrated facet of Asian culture.
Much of the popularity of Batik can be tied to the fact that the batik technique offers immense possibilities for artistic freedom as patterns are applied by actual drawing rather than by weaving with thread.
Another factor in its popularity is the fact that it is so durable. The colors in Batik are much more resistant to wear than those of painted or printed fabrics because the cloth is completely immersed in dye and the areas not protected by resist are allowed to absorb hues to the extent that the colors will not easily fade.
Because of the popularity of batik designs, many batik patterns are used in a wide variety of fabrics. Many fabrics are called batik although they were not made in the resist method. Most purists believe that such cloth has a batik like design but is not true batik which is confined to fabrics made through the application of the originally conceived Javanese methods of resist dyeing.
Modern designers in Indonesia, Malaysia and to a lesser extent Thailand, the Philippines and elsewhere often use batik design elements and often the actual batik clothe in their clothing and accessories. Although most batik fabric is now decorated and tailored by machine, there still remains a considerable market for high-quality, hand-made batik.
Discharge Printing :
Discharge Printing is also called Extract Printing. This is a method of applying a design to dyed fabric by printing a color-destroying agent, such as chlorine or hydrosulfite, to bleach out a white or light pattern on the darker coloured ground. In color-discharge printing, a dye impervious to the bleaching agent is combined with it, producing a colored design instead of white on the dyed ground.
Discharge printing has been around for decades. But only in the past 7-8 years screen printers in the industry have recognized it seriously. In the early years of discharge printing, the finished discharge print needed to be steamed during the drying process. This discouraged the use of discharge systems in the finished garment arena. The newly developed discharge ink systems are chemically reactive and dont need to be steam-neutralized. This advancement opened the door to discharge printing for the average screen printer.
Discharge printing has the ability to make bright, opaque colors on dark fabrics with a soft hand. Years ago the idea of opaque colors on dark fabrics and soft hand couldnt co-exist.
Successful light-on-dark printing with plastisol relies on increased pigment loads, fillers and other additives to block out the color of the garment. Discharge inks modify the garment color by removing the garment color and replacing it with the new ink color. In simple terms, the discharge ink "bleaches" out the dye in the garment, thus allowing the pigment in the ink to absorb into the shirt fibers.
The real magic of discharge printing can be witnessed when printing four-color process on black 100% cotton shirts. The print before curing appears very transparent. One can barely see the print until the garment exits the oven chamber, where the results can be quite remarkable: bright, vivid colors with a soft hand.
The graphics on the casino gaming tables are printed with discharge inks to avoid the interference of the printed line with the roll of the dice. If the ink on these tables were printed with plastisol, the ink film (because it is a surface print) would change the speed and direction of the dice, thus changing the way the dice land. Discharge ink, on the other hand, provides a dyed-in-the-fabric result, keeping the playing surface smooth.
The decrease in the production time is the biggest bonus of all. The fact that you can skip flash curing completely saves hours of production time and eliminates registration problems between the designs colors and the white printer under base used in normal printing on blacks.
However, flash curing can be used in conjunction with discharge printing when printing discharge as an under base.
Cleaner and more transparent inks can also be printed onto dark garments with the help of discharge additives. Early discharge additives were designed only for water base inks, but plastisol additives are available.
Characteristics that indicate a garment will work with discharge ink
- The garment has to be made of natural fibers (100% cotton)
- The dye used in the garment must be dischargeable. The best results are achieved with garments that are 100% cotton and dyed with a reactive dye.
- The garment should not have been over dyed (when fabric is re-dyed to another color). This often happens because of a shortage of a certain fabric color or, in many cases, because quality control rejected the fabric color. These rejected colors are then over dyed with a black dye, which will bring nightmares to life when trying to use discharge inks. The discharge ink might discharge the black dye - only to reveal a phantom color underneath.
Always test your garment to see if it is suitable for discharge printing. If you are a major printer doing large-volume printing, be aware that the shirts you order from the mill are tracked by lot numbers and it is possible that a completely different dye may be used from one lot to the next. Let your sales representative know that you are doing discharge printing and mention in writing that you need a dischargeable garment.
Tie And Dye
Patan Patola of Gujarat is the most extraordinary woven sarees anywhere in the world. It is only in Bali, Indonesia that this type of weave is created. The technique involved is that both the warp and the weft threads are tied in areas where the original is to be retained and then dyed. They continue to tie the threads from the lighter color to the darker color until the final patter is dyed on to the un-woven thread. After this both tied and dyed weft and warp threads are woven and the design emerges. This is known as patola. Internationally this technique is known as ikat, an Indonesian word. The finest example of ikat known in the world is the patola of Patan, which is the double ikat, where the warp and weft are tied and dyed before they are woven. The pattern emerges as the warp is laid out and then gets brilliantly delineated when the weft is thrown across.
Tenganan in Bali is the only other centre where double ikat is still practiced. Salvi communities, who weave the patola in Patan, have perfected this technique into a fine art.
The warp for the border and the body are prepared separately. The warp is then stretched in a narrow long street using rods to stretch the threads. The pattern to be created is marked by using powdered charcoal mixed in water. The weft is prepared by wrapping it around two rods, which are inserted in to a beam stretched according to the required width. Inserting thick twisted cotton threads between them separates the groups of weft. The pattern is then tied. First those sections, which are remaining white, are tied, since the design is outline in the base color. The main pattern color emerges during this process. The final dye bath is the main background color, which more often than not, is red. Each color requires that the tied sections are untied and threads to be protected are tied and then dyed. This process is painstaking and great precision is required from the very beginning, when the warp and the weft are prepared, and when the warp threads are laid.
The dyed warp threads are once again stretched to their entire length, which is normally 20 yards, needed for these sarees. The warp for the borders is attached at this stage and the entire warp of the saree is then tied to the rods, rolled and stored ready for weaving. This is then mounted on the simple single harness loom and the weft threads are reeled into the shuttle bobbins. The beam is placed at an angle with one side raised higher. The weft is thrown across and is carefully adjusted often with the use of a long needle so that the patterns synchronize and solid color emerges. So the patterns are based on a square grid, the lines are never distinct, causing a slight haziness, giving the impression of viewing the pattern through flowing water.
Patan used to export patolas from ancient times to the Far East. In Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia the patola played an important part in rituals and ceremonies and became an integral part of their lives. A large scarf or kerchief with the line motif was a popular item, which was sent out from Multan to Java. Since Cambay, todays Khambhat, was another port from which patolas were exported, the name Cambay became associated with them. Some of the motifs drawn from the repertoire of these countries were absorbed into the designs woven on the sarees for local use.
The sarees have patterns like the pan bhat, leaf pattern, the nari-kunjar-jhar, lady, elephant, enclosed in a border or a jal, trellis work pattern. Chhabadi bhat, basket design, chowkdi bhat, square or lozenges, pattern with flowers in each corner, ratan chowk bhat, the jewelled square, raas bhat, the circular dance design, vohra gaji bhat, the design woven for the Vohra community, and many others.
Today only three families of Salvis continue this tradition in Patan. As a result of a training centre started by the Khadi and Village Industries Board in the late fifties, single ikat sarees are being woven in Rajkot also.
Ikat weaving is done in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. In Pochampalli, Andhra Pradesh, it is known as pagdu bandha baddabhasi or chilka. The finer tie and dye patterns earlier woven in Chirala were woven in geometric patterns, known as telia-rumal. The origin of this style is not known; some trace it to Gujarat, others to Orissa. Yet another possibility is that it might have been developed in Jalna, since the fishermen of the coast used the rumals. In rural areas people still use the rumal as turban and as an upper cloth called baddabhasi. The telia rumal used to be exported to Aden in large quantities in the early 19th century and were then distributed to the Gulf countries and Africa.
Pochampalli began the production of these rumals as late as the beginning of the last century and began to export them to Iran and the Gulf. The Second World War disrupted the trade causing difficulties to the weavers. In 1955-56, Pochampalli was a poor isolated village with not even a road. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, who was the Chairman of the All India Handicrafts Board, went by jeep to Pochampalli. She persuaded the weavers to weave the first cotton saree of 60 counts, which proved to be very popular and the weaver seized the opportunity to begin producing sarees. Later the Board sent two weavers to Varanasi to study silk weaving and this resulted in the production of ikat work silk sarees, for which the demand has been growing steadily. Today Pochampalli is a prosperous village and a few master weavers are also copying the Patan patola. The weaving of ikat furnishing is now done in the entire Nalgonda district and involves nearly 18,000 looms.
Orissa has a distinctive style of ikat known as bandha. In this tradition the single ikat is worked in the warp and the borders are prepared separately. The Sambalpur Vachitraouri sarees has an extra warp pattern on the body and a Hand-Printed, Dyed and Painted Fabrics extra warp pattern on the pallu, while the shkarpara designs of squares of different colors-white, red and black- are in double ikat. The famous silk ikat sarees of Navapatan combine woven patterns on the border and pallu. They also wove calligraphic ikat shawls with verses from Geeta Govinda, which were offered to Lord Jagannath at Puri.
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