Second week of my internship at 3rd Rail Print Space and I have been given a project to work on, which is super exciting!

I’ve been tasked with creating a set of pigment sample swatches on fabric to make into a book of swatches for clients, and also to scan and digitize these for the website.

What I’ve done so far:

• Made a file of 10cm × 10cm squares, each with a 3cm border of blank space around them on Photoshop, which I then printed onto film
• Coated and exposed a 48 silkscreen for fabric with the 6 square design
• Mixed half of the pigments up with transparent fabric binder, ready to be printed with and made note of which ones I had and hadn’t mixed yet
• Ratio of 6g of pigment to 100g of binder
• Printed 6 of these colours onto the fabric (pinned and ironed out first)
• Ran those 6 through the baker machine

I think one of them (fluoro orange) will need to be done again as it has a mark, but I am happy with the other five. I am concerned that the other fluoro colours aren’t as bright as I think they should be, but I followed the ratios correctly, and they match the booklet from the company, so I’ll check with my manager when I’m back in on Thursday. This is an ongoing project that I’ll be working on whenever it’s quiet during the 9-5 of my internship, until I have all 19 colours printed, scanned, edited and uploaded online as well as physically to do be made into a swatch book. This is a really good way for me to learn all the stages of the process, so I’m really pleased to have been given this to do!