Inking and Block Printing on Fabric

hi guys it's Val welcome to the studio today we are going to block Brent yeah all right come on in let's see what sort of tools we need first off you're gonna need to create yourself a nice surface to print on I use a bunch of old fabrics drop cloths you can use sheets the key is I have a little bit of scrap batting underneath to give a cushion underneath your printing area this is where my fabric is this is what I'm gonna print on today then we have our block in between this and our inking station I don't have any padding under the inking station doesn't matter so tools that we need for all of this are our spatula to mix our ink our roller to roll our ink this surface which I use Plexiglas but you could use regular glass you could use a cookie sheet anything that you can create your well of ink then we also need our very important ink this is speedball fabric block printing ink I love this stuff has a wide variety of colors has a great texture and it dries within a couple days and is set really great stuff the final thing that is more optional depending on you really this is called a baron and it is used to press your block into your fabric and or your paper you can use this ink on fabric or paper which is great but when you create this much of a cushion and you're using some of this speedy carve which is a little bit cushier then I just use my hand so let's dive in first off we got to mix some ink now I don't have a huge surface that I'm covering so I don't need a huge amount of ink and that's really important because otherwise then you waste a lot of ink so there's some blue and then we're gonna add some violet to it so it's just a little bit darker now this violet too is one of my problem children it has a lot of oils seal that oil coming out so I'm trying to get to the ink there it is this oil is not like a horrible thing to get mixed in here but when it comes out like that what happens is then your ink gets a little bit too transparent so I just put it off to the side I move it up here now we're gonna mix this guy up it's really important that you mix super well but you don't need to spread out your ink all across the surface here to mix it as you can see I'm keeping it in a pretty small zone this will help keeping to keep your ink from drying out because this will dry out if you take too long so you've got everything covered this also will expose any little dried pieces that sometimes happen and you mean now I'm creating an ink trough which this is where you will use your roller to dab into that to create your ink well okay so it's a little bit wider than my roller so that when I tap into it I'm going to get pretty much some on all the roller as you can see I'm tapping into that space that ink I'm not burying my roller in it so then you start spinning spinning that roller so you get an even surface of ink now this is super light I don't have enough so I'm going to come back in and I'm gonna go like this and I'm gonna make sure that it's even all over my roller and this which is called your inkwell it's like a stamp pad and you're going to want it to look like a stamp pad you're not gonna want it to be super wet or super dry there's that nice balance and I know I've had the right balance one that it sounds a certain way so I want you to really listen the first thing you hear is my my roller spinning right and the second thing you hear is the sound of that ink on the roller and it has a very specific sound also when you look at the roller it looks almost like a stamp pad it's a very even amount of ink it's not super wet right okay now I'm going to show you how you don't want your well to look because this is just as important is as how it should look first off you never come over here from this side and pull your ink down and don't just go like that in the middle of all your ink so that's a lot of ink right okay first off it makes it super slick and it's hard to spin your rollers so when you see this see all that texture and all that wetness now if you were to roll your block with this you would get you would lose your detail within all your carving right the ink would ooze over the edges the whole thing whole point of this is applying thin layers of ink so now we're gonna just clean up this well so that happens it's okay not the end of the world put it dried ink over there you just make another one okay so now in a quest to find our perfect sounding well I'm gonna tap into that right and you want it to be even oh there's a little goober in here which is a little dried piece of ink so I'm just gonna scrape it out these things happen and I want you to notice how I'm holding my roller see how my handle is parallel to the to the surface I'm not up like this this is not not gonna work for you so you want a roll like this alright I think we have another thing it's time it's nice and even to roll our block so this is a nice clean block there hasn't been any ink on it so we're gonna roll make sure again you're spinning your block your roller excuse me and then you're covering the entire surface now the first time I roll I will do a test print that's why my drop cloths are covered in blood prints is because I have found for me printing that first print you make on a clean block is never as opaque and crisp as I want it to be it's a little bit thin so we've now what I like to call prime to the block you can see this thin layer of ink on there and but you can also see the texture of the fabric right so we're gonna go back over here I'm gonna fill our roller and then we're gonna roll the block again now this one we're gonna actually print on our blue fabric so one of the things that's really important as I've said and I'll say this a lot its den layers of ink thin thin layers of ink because it'll transfer better and you won't lose any of your detail or get goopy and when you look at my block it has that similar texture to the way that my well looks and my roller has this kind of like stamp pad sort of amount on there without it seeming too wet right okay I'm gonna find a spot on here here we go I like to use the palm of my hand gently press I shouldn't say gently in a little bit but you're not when you have this padding underneath it helps the block transfer better you also can use this part of your hand and rock it making sure you get all your all your parts if you just do this you're gonna miss apart and something won't transfer as well there we go now you can see like right here I didn't push as well my finger there you go you can see I didn't push as well but kind of the beauty of this is that one you'll start learning you know your block really well you know where you have to print and this is handmade we're not machines so that's not going to be exact every time kind of why I like it I'm perfectly perfect all right so I have like that guys already here we go I'm just gonna toss him right here again gonna push on everything make sure I get those edges but I am pushing straight down I'm not going moving the block a lot or you're gonna get a little shadow if you do that I'm gonna roll that block up again my Wells getting a little dry so I gotta go in and pull some ink and then we come back over here all right and one of the other things that's really important for maintaining your supplies longevity is I always play a roller like this when you're not using it if you lay it this way when you're not using it over time you'll get a little indentation so you can see where the line is from where I was sitting there you'll get an indentation in there I have a couple of bigger rollers a little bit longer ones that have weird spots that don't roll well with ink because of that so I have learned my lesson I always keep it up so here we go here's our last one I'm gonna print today and then I want to tell you a little bit about the importance of cleanup so again for the longevity of all your supplies and tools so it was a great idea to have good cleanup practices kind of like in your kitchen right so I will when I'm done with my printing I will take and scrape up as much of the ink off of this piece as possible any of this stuff and this goes directly into the trash you know and I wipe off as much off of my spatula and I'll roll my roller out so that my roller is almost empty again scrape this up then I use a little dawn and a sponge to clean all of these and then you just let them air-dry all right everyone that was fun printing with you today I really hope you got some good tips and I hope you go out and enjoy some printing yourselves email me if you have any questions take care you

Channel: Stitchin' Post

Views: 48,332

Rating: 4.9496021 out of 5

Keywords: block printing, valori wells, stitchin post, block print tutorial, block print demo, how to block print, printing on fabric

Id: 6GpmdCqDSZI

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020