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- Title of Abstract:
Synthesis of Traditional Crafts and New Technologies (Ref #181)
- Date:
- 23-10-2006 12:44:01
- Status:
-
Unsuccessful
- Rating:
- 3
-
Details:
- Keywords: Wovens, Craft and the digital process, Digital Inkjet Printing
The word craft - often mentioned when talking about textiles - usually relates to skills in making by hand. Weaving is an ancient craft and one of the oldest industries, but in a world where fabric is mass produced faster and cheaper than ever before is there still a place for hand-crafted fabrics, and can the synthesis of traditional crafts and new technology succeed?
The aim of the research was to integrate the qualities of specially hand-woven fabrics, using different yarn combinations, with the visual qualities of digital inkjet printing to create unique textile samples.
This paper seeks to present the results of these experiments and explore some of the issues arising from them such as:
Will the structure of the fabric 'enhance' or 'interfere' with the
digitally printed image or pattern?
How is the image or pattern affected when different fibres, yarns and
colours are combined within one cloth?
Nearly all suppliers and service bureaus for digital textile printing use basic pre-treated fabrics. Suppliers have focused on the range of fabrics most commonly ordered and easiest to manage for inkjet printing. Designing alternative base cloths, which are specially woven with the intention to apply digital inkjet printing, has the potential to create exciting and innovative results.
Typically for optimal colour retention, digital printing requires the base fabrics to be composed of yarns that all belong to the one dye class, i.e. cellulosic fibres would be printed with reactive dyes. Interesting results can be achieved when the base fabric is made from yarns that belong to different dye classes, in this situation some of the yarns will accept the dyestuffs to varying degrees while others will reject it completely. This has further implications for the way in which the base cloth and the printed image interact.
With my background in woven textiles, practical experiments were set up which involved creating different base cloths with various weave structures and yarn combinations. The same image was printed onto different base cloths and the results were compared to assess how the structure interacted with the image. Geometric and organic/floral images were printed to test if there were certain 'types' of images or patterns that would be more successful. Different scales of the same pattern were printed, again, to test if there was an optimum scale at which the aesthetics were most successful.
The results of these experiments are a collection of unique fabrics, which could only be created by the successful fusion of craft and new technology.
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