After reading a post from one of my most favorite designers ever, Donna Wilson,  I realised that what we do at Made590 with our clothing range is kind of similar. We make, design, sample, screen print, source fabric and manufacture all in house and all locally!
One process that I entirely do myself is screen print. I started screen printing when I was doing my HSC many, many years ago, I kept on with it and I guess I am self taught. I have never had any formal training but I have trained with some very lovely patient teachers. Screen printing is all about trial and error and working out your own technique. I have a bit of a love, hate, love relationship with printing. I love how I can create something from nothing, I love that I can have new things in the store weekly that are original, limited pieces that no other store has! Being able to do my own printing for Made590 also keeps our costs down which we then pass onto the customers, from the day that we opened I have always being able to offer our made590/blindwear tees for $35.
So anyway every Monday and Tuesday I go over to my parents and screen print in their garage- sorry to say that no I don’t have a glamorous studio when I ‘create’ everything! What I do have though is 2 built in baby sitters/grandparents who take care of my 2 boys while I print. This week was a especially exciting week as I just got made 7 screens with brand new designs for the coming season! Below is a sneaky peak of what I was printing and how the process is done… Hope you find it interesting! Christina xx
Please note that photography is NOT my talent, I tried to make it look slightly better by using an Iphone App but I don’t think it worked, my apologies in advance!!
 

new silk screens arrive! I get my screens made by Peter Leis, Shivaun and Amon are amazing, they put up with my incredibly difficult fine line artworks!

 

my messy carousel

screen in, ink on, ready for printing

success! The new ‘raindrops’ print works! We were all a bit worried about the fine lines.

Usually I print onto ready made garments such as t-shirts but with this garment we decided panel printing would be better so we could print edge to edge, it is a bit more fiddly but the end result will be better!

panels drying

Today a total of 52 panels were printed for this garment. Tomorrow I will take them to get heat sealed at Publisher Textiles, then they will be taken back to the maker who will sew them up! Stay tuned to see the final FINISHED product in a few weeks.