Julie, the photos of the exhibit look great. I just went back and read the original thread. What fabric did you end up using? Any comments or advice to others after having gone through the process? I'm just going through the Jacquard and Fisher textiles websites and I'm wondering what you used.
Thanks,
Daniel
Thanks Daniel. I ended up using a 10mm Crepe Georgette. It is firmly adhered to a paper backing which fed through the printer quite well, BUT, because my lengths were 3meters, by about 2.5 meters fine crinkles, puckers, creases? started to appear and I aborted 2 runs because I didn't want to have any head strikes. It actually aborted itself once when a little crinkle about 1mm high developed. I think it is because of the suction and the feeding action combined with the not really stiff paper backing and slight skew because of how it feeds out and irregular tension on roll.
The important thing I found was to keep the length feeding out straight - which meant I had to gently keep the slightest tension on the length as each mm feed advancement was made. Quite arduous actually. It skewed when just left to stack beneath the machine. (Epson 9800)
I was pretty concerned that I may not get the 5 drops I wanted to print, but fortunately with careful and diligent feeding out of the fabric after it was printed, I managed to get them.
I also chose the Crepe Georgette because it didn't crush as much as the silks. I didn't want to have to iron my drops in the gallery, and I didn't want them to look like they had just come out of the bottom of a rucksack. I actually left the paper backing on until installation time just to keep them pristine, but the sample I had which I carried around for some time, became crushed a bit, but wasn't too bad. Any crinkles which happened when we installed in the gallery just seemed to go away after a few hours which was great.
..so..advice...don't print as long as 3m with really fine fabrics unless you have heaps of extra rolls in case of duds.
and.. be committed to helping feed out long length so it doesn't skew. ...and ...be mindful of whether the fabric crushes in transit.
Julie