Hi everyone! My name is Michele, and I own a screen printing shop in Martinsburg, West Virginia. I've got a customer that wants me to print her quilting patterns for her, and I don't know where to begin.

They are the pattens on muslin, printed in the blue wash-out ink. I have no idea what type of ink this is, or what the printing process is.

If anyone can give me any insight on how this process works, please let me know. I'd love to be able to provide this service to my customer, but it's so completely different from plastisol-based textile printing that I'm at a loss as to how to begin.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Michele

Couldn't you just photocopy the blue muslin patterns and make copies from that? You might have to enhance your copy to get the lines a ittle darker.

Hello, from a fellow Michele. You would have to speak to your ink vendors to see if they carry "disappearing ink" you can use with your screens. It's usually a water soluable ink that washes out with soap and water.

To get the image duplicated, might be tricky. I would scan the image you want to duplicate and see if you can get enough contrast with either drawing or photo software. A graphic designer may be able to help you achieve the results you need to make a screen if you're not familiar with scanning and/or the software.

The blue wash-out ink she probably means is the type used in quilt marking pens, completely water soluable. Check with your vendors, although it could be hard to come by. I've never seen it in any other form. The pen stuff would be too thin to silkscreen with, I would think.

Another practical consideration - muslin can shrink like crazy. Are you prewashing it?

some applique pieces need to be reversed also

Thanks for your responses! I did some digging, and I found a company that makes something called Mrs. Stewarts Blueing. I called them, and she said that she had not heard of it being used as a printing ink, but I could try it. It would just need to be watered down a lot.

So, I'm going to try that. As far as getting the patterns into my computer program to create the positives, I think I'm going to have to find someone with a large-format scanner. My customer does all her own drawings, and I can just take them and scan it into my vector-based program.

Hopefully this will work. Thanks again for your help and suggestions. If I'm able to make this work, I'll let you know. Who knows, maybe I'll become the leading pattern printer on the east coast! :lol:

Michele