Shelly Goldsmith – unpicking the masked seam

Technical Note 09 – *  Using a natural fibre as a mask/stencil when dye sublimation printing – UPDATED. 

Documenting technical developments discovered whilst pursuing the project Locus of the Dress  

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I have been working with dye sublimation extensively in this project. In the past i have used a layer of cloth over another to mask the print. Interestingly on this occasion it did not work… The print passed through the layer to print under the pink bias strip. It was a bit of a surprise !

I used cotton bias binding as the top layer. I think this is due to the porous quality of the bias tape, its loose woven, allowing the dye vapor in the dye sublimation process to pass through the weave and not act as a stencil/mask

The bias tape has not been dyed in any way even though it came into direct contact with the dyed paper during  the print process –  the cloth underneath has been printed.  The bias strip is cotton and so will not take the dye, which will work on man-made fibers only. I have used this technique quite a bit its been quite reliable, but i have used heavy densely woven cotton in the past and so this is something i must consider when using the technique in the future. You can see from the images that the  polyester thread stitching has absorbed the dye and left a mask on the seam of the blouse

Shelly Goldsmith – unpicking the masked seam

Shelly Goldsmith – unpicking the masked seam

Shelly Goldsmith – unpicking the masked seam

Shelly Goldsmith – unpicking the masked seam

Shelly Goldsmith – unpicked  masked seam

Shelly Goldsmith – unpicked masked seam