Printing Day

Curtis, the boys and I took a road trip this week. We did the drive down Hwy 5 to LA so that I could oversee the printing of a lot of fabric.  I have to admit that I feel very comfortable in factories. I love to see how things are made. This was no exception.

This is the medium that the dye is mixed with so that it smoothly glides across the screens. It's hard to realize scale in this image, but this tub is HUGE. 

This is the dye, mixed and ready to be added to the medium. At first glance I thought it was a juice bar, and then thought, how odd! Really just a second later I figured it out.

Here is my Tumbleweed screen in place and ready to go.

This is the guy who worked on my job all day. He was very nice, but not a word of English.

This is a photo during production. The worker here is checking

 to be sure that everything is lined up properly.

And here it is coming out of the heater right after getting printed

Next the fabric is piled into a bin which is wheeled over to the washing machine (this machine is 30' long!). Then it's rolled and stacked on palettes until the trucking company picks it up, drives it up Hwy 5 right to my office. 10,000 yards, on the way. whew.  It's a lot of work and the sewing hasn't even begun!