Dye & Print Design Lab

What can you do in this lab?

In this lab, colours are one of the most important components, permeating pretty much everything here. Here, students add colour and patterns to their fabrics and garments; they combine different techniques and materials. They also continue to work with materials that they have developed in other labs at the Swedish School of Textiles.

Many people may think that we just hand-print things in this lab, but here so much more is happening:

Before a large fabric is to be dyed, a test batch is done to get the right recipe for the desired colour. Test dyeing is done on cellulose, protein, and synthetic fibres.

There is significant demand for knowledge about natural dyes. We use natural dyes such as indigo, madder root, brazil wood, onion peel, avocado, turmeric, tea, and rust, among others, and we have an ongoing effort to develop natural printing inks.

Dyeing is done both in washing machines and pots. In pot dyeing, we work a lot with different so-called shibori techniques (a Japanese dyeing technique where fantastic patterns are created on the fabric with the help of wooden blocks, strings, and folds that press the fabric together during the dye bath, i.e. a kind of batik).

In hand printing, we use natural dyes as well as conventional printing inks such as pigment print paste, which works on all types of materials, reactive print paste for cellulose fibres, and acid print paste for protein fibres. We also use different special pigments such as silver, gold, mother of pearl, , glitter, and a pigment that changes depending on the angle from which we see it.  

On our printing tables, we can print both placed patterns and repeated patterns. We have many different screen sizes for this.

The newest machine is a digital printing machine where you can print with pigment ink on any textile material with an almost infinite number of colours. It's a quick process where you can print as far as you want with a fabric width of up to 180 cm. It provides the opportunity to create unique collections. 

The lab also has a small sublimation printer, which makes it possible to print on synthetic materials.

Few schools give the opportunity to create pleats on larger fabrics. In our lab, however, we have a pleating cabinet. We fold our own pleating templates and also use templates produced by a company.

Dye & print design and technique have a stenter that can make coatings with different techniques such as knife coatings with paste or foam. It is also possible to print a pattern in colour using rotary screen printing. The stenter is also equipped with a foulard. 

Resources

• Test dyeing machines with the ability to dye at over 100 degrees
• Digital printing machine for pigment ink
• Sublimation printer
• Heat press for sublimation print
• Equipment to enable creating repeated patterns by hand
• Pleating cabinet
• Printing table
• Screens for printing

Contact

• Sara Björnström, Teaching Technician
• Emilia Jensen, Teaching Technician