1.FROM LABORATORY TO FACTORY AND INTO THE UNKNOWN.
2. PRINTING ON CLOTHES AND HiVis.
3. PRINTING FLAGS.
4. PRINTING PATCHES.
5. BANNER AND UMBRELLA PAINTING.
There came a time when we realised that we where not in a strange death cult, and that this thing was taking off, I decided we should make a lot of patches, so I took the great designs from the graphics and branding team, mixed them up with some other stuff and got to work
The design work is done in adobe Illustrator, this program uses vectors for perfect sharpness. You can find version 1 and 2 in the files section of "XR Volunteers". V1 needs some rearranging I think , V3 will definitely have "CONSCIENTIOUS PROTECTOR" in there somewhere.
I often do then design work for wood blocks in Illustrator also, but it gives me deep pleasure to avoid the computer and do it all by hand.
This is an image of the version 2 design, taking our core messages and spreading them around as much as possible. After the first event I felt that these big patches where the most effective, Symbol and message together.
My friend is a master printer so I send him the files and he prints me a positive on transparent film and then exposes my screen with this. You can get this done at any community or artist run print studio.
I got him to paint the emulsion right up to the edges because we have a lot to do and I don't want the ink bleeding through.Then I taped it top and bottom with parcel tape, I used the stickiest one I could find.
For cutting up the rolls of fabric I borrowed this machine, I had marked out my cutting table with the correct dimensions and then layered up one colour over the other, 5 colours and then cut them 5 at a time, it was really hard work.
I just used these Speedball hinges, visible in the picture below, they are great, but generally I'm suspicious of the rest of the stuff that they make. Then on the table I'm using this pieces of soft neoprene because it was lying around, I could have used multiple layers of fabric instead.
In this image we can see brown tape has been used to stop up leaks.
For patches I like using cotton drill fabric, all the stuff I got has a twill weave on one side and a plain weave on the other. The twill side has diagonal ridges so does not print as well.
For me it's all about using the right colours, in this second run we used purple, green and bright blue from Manchester and Orange and Magenta from North London, North London has a good bright blue too, but the fabric is lighter in weight, as well as cheaper.
Then off we go, we found this to be a 3 person job, the screenprinting is so fast that the bottleneck is hanging them up or finding other places for drying. There are lots of tutorials on screen printing so I won't go into details, but I like loads of ink on the screen and I'm a pusher, then a little lift and flood the screen.
The shops ran out of Black so I bought Purple and Ultramarine, both looked great.
Sheets of patches from the first run, the fabric colours where not so good as the second batch, and the designs are a bit fiddly, but we did great !
I did the heat curing in the local laundrette tumble drier for 30 mins, they come out crumpled but we iron one quick then another on the pile, and they heat and squash each other real quick !!! It's pretty satisfying !! Link below for other heat curing methods.
It would appear that some of our sheets of patches have travelled far . .
SUPPLIES
North London Fabric Supplier for “Plain Cotton Drill”
https://wholesalefabrics.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=4615
Manchester Fabric Supplier for “Cotton Drill Twill”
https://www.iwantfabric.com/plain-100-cotton-drill-twill-fabric.html
I got screens from https://www.handprinted.co.uk/
And Intaglio https://intaglioprintmaker.com/
If anyone finds any better suppliers then please drop me a line.