An orange day...

Todays theme is orange... at least that's what came off the table in our studio today.

Firstly, Teegs' Briar in Sunset.





and secondly, Bianca's Bloem in Burnt Orange.

Blue and green should always be seen

Sunday was another super productive day in the studio. We can't lament the loss of our weekends too much given this is really quite a lot of fun:




Bianca's new Seeds print, in a lovely 'green tea' colour.


Tegan's Briar print in a really lovely soft green colour which she will be making into shirts! (and also selling in her shop in a couple of weeks)




A calico toile of Teegs' new wrap skirt design

Friday in the studio

Today we had an action packed day in the studio, with Teegs' and Bee's screens arriving this morning, just in time for our 'printing day'.

First up, Teegs' Briar design in full repeat! (previously seen here as a placement print):


Printing Teegs' 'Briar' design - this was so easy and satisfying to print


More printing...


Printing Bee's Bloem design in a lovely charcoal on natural - we love how this turned out.


Bloem in Charcoal on natural cotton/linen

[update] both these prints will be available for purchase once they've been heat set. Teegs is in the process of setting up an etsy shop :)


Lara's new placement print (love the oldschool frame with fresh mesh and artwork)


Teegs' finished 'World Tree' cushion complete with piping

On the cutting table

On the cutting table over at Ink & Spindle are some of Lara's fabrics that she's just listed for sale in her shop!


Lara's Acacia and Birch prints.

We love our cutting table. It's so good to be able to work on things at a proper height instead of leaning over a dining table or sitting on the floor. We're very happy that Ikea brought back the Vika Artur trestle legs :)

And on the printing table today...

Learnings

While we wait for our next 3 exposed screens to be delivered (hopefully this Friday) we continue to practice our printing technique using the Birch and Acacia screens and come across new hurdles and discoveries almost daily.
Basically, we're getting to know the quirks of our lovely table.
Below are a couple of pics from the latest dabble in placement printing. It's a two colour stencil that I made without registration, so some prints worked well, and others really did not! That's half the fun tho, each print is different!
Overall, pretty happy with them.

World Tree blue with black, single print.

World Tree blue with black, mock repeat.

** BTW, Happy Birthday, Bianca!

Pirates are awesome!

Well, they are!
There is an explanation: I found some ace skull and crossbones fabric a little while back, and so I designed a shirt pattern to make it in to (named the Pirate Shirt), though of course I decided to make it in calico first - just in case I'd completely stuffed up my measurements (entirely possible), but yay, it turned out ok!!
Here it is...

The Pirate Shirt, featuring a yoke panel of Lara's Acacia in Plum, with matching buttons.

** thanks to all for the great responses, both verbal and via the internets!

Have had a some questions regarding purchase - I will be making this shirt (along with other items, as they come to life) available in the near future, but I'm not quite ready yet!! Will keep you posted tho :)

Printing addiction

Just because it's pretty :)


For mixing colours accurately

Fancy films on a Friday

Some new designs on film courtesy of Teegs and Bianca, ready to get exposed onto screens:


Briar by Tegan Rose


Bloem and Seeds by Bianca van Meeuwen

A few people have asked us how we exposed our massive screens. We are certainly not crazy enough to attempt to do this ourselves right now, so we outsource this to the experts. We can save that process for later down the track when we're ready to tackle the potential heartache and frustration ;)

Printing takes pedantic perfection and profound patience

Hehe, Teegs can take full credit (or blame, if you so have it) for that title. But it rings true - each test print run we do brings new challenges and considerations to the table. But each run gets better and better as a result. Here are some of our latest print runs, which Lara will be selling in her shop soon once the fabrics have been cured:


Acacia in plum


Birch test run on some old white demin courtesy of Mattt


Printing birch in gold - reach!


Temporary drying solution (lucky we can offset our carbon emissions from this baby)


Acacia on natural, work in progress.

City Views

We have just descended from our first, but certainly not last, foray on to our building's rooftop, and I had to share some pics with you! After a hard day's printing, we couldn't resist when our neighbour, John the Photographer invited us next door for a Friday-post-work beer and of course when he told us about the rooftop we just had to check it out!

The rooftop view across the city!

Gorgeous Lara soaking up the spring sun along with her beer!

And B, only a little terrified about walking across and then sitting on the roof - she actually made me move at one stage because she thought our combined weight would break the beam... it didn't, thankfully :)

Placement Prints!

Slightly out of order, this was the very first print we made on our table!

Pics aren't that great, taken on my phone camera

After gearing up to do our first run on Saturday morning (when we initially thought the first screens would be ready), we felt a bit lost when they were delayed until Monday... so we decided to go a bit old school and do a placement print with the A3 screen Lara had from her screenprinting days!

So, Saturday night we spent at the studio and I quickly hand drew and then cut this stencil, then we had about an hour on Sunday lunchtime to do a super fast placement print!

Our first print run!

'OMG OMG OMG' - such was the soundtrack I provided to the girls during the last two hours we just spent in the studio. There's really nothing more exciting than screen printing one's own design onto fabric. By hand. In our own studio. And the fact that our very first run of test prints was almost perfect - was just the icing on the cake.


Lara's funny 'concentrating' facial expression


Tegan and Bianca at work

My excitement was only somewhat diminished by my inexperienced use of the high pressure water cleaner that left me (and everything else within the 'Dexter' curtain) covered head to toe in yellow ink whilst trying to clean the screen. But lessons were learnt, and all worked out in the end.


Clean screen behind the 'Dexter' curtain


Birch Forest screen ready to go (a little larger scale than before)

You can not imagine how much of a burden has been lifted from our shoulders to have that first run turn out so well. There have been so many fretful moments over the last few months. We've had some great guidance from yardage printing gurus around Australia ... but the end result was a sort of mish mash of everyone's advice which we just had to cross our fingers was going to be okay. And it was!


One test repeat of the wattle - looking good!!

Nice work, girls!

Table complete!

Table says 'give me something to print now!!'

Posts have been few and far between over here at the Ink & Spindle blog! But there have been plenty of happenings, not least of which would be the completion of our printing table!


Our 'stops' - this is what happens when you get talented and dedicated people to make things for you - they add cute little details like stamped branding!

I have this running joke with a few people who have been asking "how long till you're up and running?" and I say "about two weeks". And then the same conversation happens two weeks later. And then two weeks later again.

But I can proudly say that we're really on the cusp of starting up now! In fact, if all goes smoothly today we'll do our first test print run tonight.

We'll be focussing on printing our own designs initially, until we've ironed out all the kinks. After that point we'll be able to start printing for other people. A website with pricelists and all details will be available soon :)