Traditional Fabric Printing Techniques – Block Printing By Searchicas
India is home to premium cloth manufacturing since 5th millennium BC. Cotton has been spun, woven and dyed since the Indus Valley Civilization. Till date, India has some of the most fascinating and intricate fabric printing techniques. Here we discuss some of one of them in brief
Block printing Block printing is a very old and intuitive Asian printing technique. It is akin to stamping, however since the stamps, in this case, are called blocks, the technique has gained fame as block printing. On the face of it, block printing seems a very simple process. Prepare a block with the required pattern chiselled, get the desire colored ink on the block and press the block on the fabric so the ink is printed on the fabric as per the patter. However, in reality, block printing is quite difficult and very easy to mess up.
It starts with preparation of the block. For a multi-colored design, one design would require at least as many blocks as the number of colors in the design. Each block is designated to be used for a certain color. For a complicated design, all blocks are stamped on top of each other to get the desired design. The level of craftsmanship to ensure the multiple blocks when layered together align for the perfect design is truly remarkable. It is also said that the artisans get so used to the block pressing against the fabric that it helps them in their productivity.
Even preparation of the ink is job requires experience and skill. The ink cannot be too wet, which will result in longer dry time, nor can it be too dry or thick.
One intermediate step which can be overlooked by observers is the preparation of the stamp pad. The pad has to be perfectly flat or else the impression of ink on the block will not be uniform.Â
Lastly, the press step is critical as the blocks have to be aligned perfectly and each fabric has to be blockpressed in a stipulated amount of time, with speed, so that the print is uniform across the fabric. All above steps are done by hand.
With all above detailing, the end result has to be good. Block prints are some of the most simple and beautiful patterns and can done on both hard and thin fabric. Hence, block printing can be utilized in  making quilts.
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