Digital Fusion
Combining traditional textile techniques with digital fabric printing.

By JMichelle Hill-Campbell

July 2002

The development of digital textile printing technology has challenged today's artists, designers and craftsmen to rethink how they will move forward within the textile design field. A large number of these individuals are experimenting with the latest innovations in inkjet technology and combining print innovation with traditional surface design technique. These artists are finding new opportunities to inspire and fuel their imagination through the use of traditional surface design applications on fabric substrates, which are mixed with new and unusual materials.

These craftsmen and artisans are creating new-age cloth by using their knowledge of hand painting, resist dying, discharge and devore-burnout techniques, to name a few, in an ingenious interface with inkjet technology. Joining these applications with a broad range of fabric substrates allows the artists to push the boundaries of possibility. The results are a new textile classification, as well as a new aesthetic and functionality.

Designers, artists and craftsmen are making many unsuspected discoveries by exploiting a wide selection of software applications and plug-ins that offer design solutions. Photoshop, Nedgraphics, Illustrator, Director and U4ia are a few of the popular graphic software packages that many artists employ to work cross platform, where images may be manipulated as vector or raster based files to take advantage of software features. The designer will thus find it liberating to modify formal textile design rules, or disregard them, in order to create new ones which suit color changes, recoloring files, rescaling motifs and/or creating super graphics that do not confine designers to following popular trends in the market. The choice of whether to create engineered designs or layouts that follow a repeat format represents another option that challenges these same rules.

When venturing into experimental digital printing that utilizes mixed techniques and materials, it is important to understand how one’s equipment will be affected by the process. Each designer must analyze and decide upon a digital printer that will allow flexibility in working with certain varieties of substrates, fiber contents and surface textures. The fabric’s thickness, in terms of its ability to pass through the printer, and its traditional surface treatment must be compatible with the printing process, thus setting the boundaries on the final product. The designer or printer will have more confidence to experiment if the machine is efficient and user friendly. There are many variations of digital printers available. Ink jet printers are having a great deal of success due to their compactness, which allows for continuous digital printing on a variety of natural and synthetic substrates.

Continuous ink printing consists of the release of a stream of ink droplets under constant pressure through nozzles, which are encased within a print head that rides across the platen surface of the printer at a determined height. It is the distance between the platen surface and the print head that will allow for a specific thickness of cloth and surface treatment to pass through. Care should be taken if using substrates with loose fibers that might clog the nozzles.

Careful investigation of inks will yield answers on whether pigments or acid, fiber reactive or disperse dyes are the best choices for a successful result. The artist must ask what is involved in changing from one ink class to another if it becomes necessary . An ink that will allow printing on the widest selection of fabric substrates should be chosen. This choice will determine how well the digital print technique will combine with the traditional application and which sequence will support the most successful experiment.

The use of the process colors; cyan, magenta, yellow, black, plus additional spot colors, depending on how many print heads are installed in the machine, allows the printer to achieve reliable and realistic reproduction of a broad spectrum of shades with outstanding brilliance. Digital printing utilizes sophisticated color management and calibration technology to reproduce process color matching provided in specialized software packages, compatible with digital printers and graphics applications. Research continues to extend the color gamut in an attempt to meet industry standards for full color.

Many textile designers working with surface design techniques are revitalizing the industry by reinventing traditional methods found in varying cultures around the world. When combining multiple techniques, artists should take on the task of applying their own pretreatment to substrates. Proper pretreatment is essential to ensure color fastness after steaming and is important in retaining the full strength of dye applications.

The following are techniques that make good candidates for interface with digital print technology. These innovations represent the beginning stages of a new phase of textile design technology, the direction of which will be determined by the discoveries made by individual artists.

Silk Painting: a patterning style in which color is applied to a fabric and usually fixed by steaming or curing. The fabric base is usually white or previously dyed or painted. The challenge of combining this technique with digital printing is retaining the strength of the two methods while making them work together. The integration of these techniques opens up many options, for example, to digitally print, steam or apply hand dying, which should be left to artistic interpretation. Exciting results can be found in any combination of these approaches, and the artist will come to discover the ideal effect after the process has been repeated several times. Fabric must be rinsed free of all old dye in order to accurately judge the final results. The objective is making sure that pretreatment is applied to both techniques, thus insuring color fastness.

Resist Dying: tie-dyeing and batik are examples of this method that juxtaposes organic natural textures with patterns of a more mechanical nature. Techniques like shibori dyeing, batik or paste resist may be added in combination with digital printing.

Discharge: a chemical process used to remove or strip color from cloth, which is normally achieved through immersion or printing techniques. Most color removal methods will lighten the cloth to a value that could allow for over-dying or printing. Digital printing combined with discharging creates a very interesting surface quality, exploiting the use of the original cloth color.

Devore: also known as burn-out technique, this method is used to produce a pattern on cloth by printing with a chemical paste that destroys one or more of the fiber contents. This embossed affect works surprisingly well, the relief texture created by removing the pile cloth and exposing the backing is very interesting. However, this technique is very labor intensive and cloth must be thoroughly cleaned before being run through a digital printer. If fibers are not removed from the cloth, nozzles could be clogged. Be forewarned that experimentation in this area requires a great deal of testing.

Silkscreen Printing: an analog printing method that designates each color position in a design to a screen. When using this with digital printing, find an approach that allows the natural quality of the image, texture and color of the hand screen method to distinguish itself from the digital file and its inherent characteristics.

Utilizing combined applications will greatly reduce production time until a formula for working with these techniques is finalized. Print innovations change the face of traditional surface design and digital technology by reintroducing craftsmanship to the textile industry and creating a market that allows micro-manufacturers and small print shops to impact upon the fashion, textile, home furnishings, and interior design industries. Celebrate the differences and enjoy the results.

J.Michelle Hill-Campbell is digital fabric printer and textile consultant working and in New York City. She teaches Digital fabric printing and CAD courses at Parsons School of Design-New York and her textile work is featured in the Walt Disney productions of “The Lion King" and "Aida” on Broadway.