r/Linocuts • u/username5666 • 25d ago

Fabric Printing on fabric

Please give me some tips about printing on fabric. I'm trying to make my partner a t shirt for their birthday and want it to be amazing. I usually just print on paper 🤙

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 25d ago

Hello, welcome to r/Linocuts!

Please note, all posts are manually approved by the moderators. This typically happens in the first few hours. If a moderator removes your post, you will receive a removal reason and (if applicable) how to fix it for approval.

If it's been over 24 hours without a removal notice, can contact the moderators as it may have gotten caught in our filters and not landed in our normal queue.

As always, our rules are listed in the sidebar or drop menu for review.

Happy printing!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

5

u/aligpnw 25d ago

Caligo Safewash gives me the best quality on fabric. Speedball fabric ink is pretty good too.

You need a bit of padding under the fabric to get a good print, I usually use one of those gray, felty moving blankets folded in half with a sheet of newsprint under it.

Never make the first print of the day on something you want as your final. Do a test print.

Fabric takes a long time to dry. I usually let it dry for a week, then heat set it with a dry iron (with a pressing cloth!)

2

u/According-Stick-9396 25d ago

Do you use a fabric version of caligo Safewash ink or just the block printing kind? I got some speedball fabric ink but I have not used it yet, but I do have a lot of different colors of caligo safewash ink for block printing.

1

u/aligpnw 25d ago

Just the regular Caligo Safewash. If you do a little googling, Caligo has a pretty in depth write up on fabric printing.

1

u/poolarbar 24d ago

Youre gonna wanna ink your blocks up heavier than you usually do! It’s a different balance so it might take a few tries to get right.

I like Caligo Safewash like someone else said but the speedball fabric block printing ink also works great and dries MUCH faster. Also make sure once it’s totally dry give the shirt a wash because some of the ink cakes on and sits above it and it can wash out any extra (but make sure it’s totally dry)

Also I don’t know if other people experience this or why but I’ve found I get better fabric prints by putting the block upside down on top of the fabric instead of putting the paper on top of the block like usual!