Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began.
In the last post I tested Digital Grounds and cotton fabric, and today I’m testing Digital Grounds on sheer organza fabric.
Printing on organza is always a little challenging because of the sheerness of the fabric, but working with sheers is such a delight and can produce such beeeeuuuutiful results.
I originally painted one half of a sample piece of organza with Digital Ground Clear Gloss (for porous surfaces) but the results were just awful – it looked like a piece of plastic and you can see the results below. This is the upper side; the under side was worse!
So instead I painted one half of the organza with Digital Ground for non-porous surfaces and while the surface still looked a little plastic-like, it wasn’t totally too bad. Even though organza is a porous surface, using the ground for non-porous surfaces didn’t seem to have a negative effect and in fact the results are just gorgeous! The left side of the sample below is untreated; the right side is coated with the ground and you can clearly see the difference.
The colors on the untreated side (left) are a little washed out while the colors on the treated side (right) are rich and saturated. The surface treatment left a slight shine which is noticeable through the image on the upper side, and moreso on the under side, however rather than detracting from the appearance, it adds a luminous quality to the image – it’s quite nice.
I ironed the organza to a sheet of freezer paper to send it through the printer and this is what the paper looked like after I removed the organza. You can see that on the coated side of the fabric (right side) that most of the ink was retained on the print as opposed to the untreated side of the fabric (left side) where most of the ink was transferred through the fabric and left on the paper carrier.
This is what the print looks like when placed over the top of a patterned background. The image on the treated side is easily visible while still maintaining a good sheerness, while the image on the untreated side is less discernible and blends more into the background.
So the results of Digital Grounds on sheer fabric using Digital Ground for non-porous surfaces … a big thumbs up!
This is a great product to use if you want to produce clear and colorful images on sheers.
Next I’ll be testing dryer sheets (simply because I can’t help myself).
(Thanks to Sukanto Debnath for the great photo that I used for my print.)
