I did a lot of screenprinting on day 6, and although it started out well (with a lot of help from Nelly herself), towards the end of the day my technique started to suffer a bit and prints weren't fully coming out, or were flopping off the edge of the fabric. I could try and blame tiredness or distraction but I think it's a case of not being fully practised in the art of screenprint. It truly is a skill that I imagine most people don't fully appreciate, and I have utmost respect for Helen and anyone else for mastering it! Anyway I couldn't figure out why I could make clean prints in uni, with not-as-good equipment and a lot less space and why I couldn't do it at The PrintHaus, and I psyched myself out and never fully recovered. Helen even gave me a step to stand on, but it didn't make a lot of difference. So that was a self-inflicted low end to my day. I also did some seam trimming and interface ironing earlier on in the day which I did rather well at so it wasn't all bad!
Day 7 was the last day! A sad day indeed! First of all I cut out some swing tags into heart shapes; branding and packaging are very important for a professional finish. After that it was time to do some dyeing! Since we were at The Nelly Studio HQ and the weather was nice, this took place outside. I helped by tying up t-shirts into weird fish shapes, which were then soaked in bleach. Helen also did some tote bags and t-shirts in other colours of dye and they turned out really cool. She printed them a couple of days later:
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Dip-dyed Woodland Aminal Totes by Nelly's Treasures! |
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Tie-dyed UFO T-shirts by Nelly's Treasures! |
The other big job of the day was finishing off these cushions:
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'You Are My Sunshine' Cushions by Nelly's Treasures! |
I must say [another] big thanks to Nelly Herself for having me, being very patient and lovely and also to Jude from The PrintHaus for her help and loveliness; I had so much fun on my placement and learnt a lot of things (and also made a few minor mistakes!), plus I got to meet some cool new people - always a bonus!
My next placement will be at Hand & Lock in December... very exciting! I also know that Nelly's Treasures will have a stall at the Art Car Bootique in Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff next weekend, so head down to that if you're around!