For this session we decided to try out some transfer paints and look at using them with a conventional household iron and a hot press. You can buy a hot press for around £100. Health and safety first, this machine get extremely hot follow the manufacturers instructions carefully. use baking parchment with both methods to stop accidental melting of fabrics.
This was a joint work together session, I used the iron and Denise used the hot press, well until I pushed her to one side! We used synthetic velvet to start. Denise had a stack of pre painted papers to use. The top was the iron method and the bottom the hot press. The iron took a long time and quite a bit of pressure, whereas the press took 20 seconds.
Synthetic voile, not so good.
We also tried some cheap printed paper bags and again the press was much clearer (left pic, bottom) You can get a nice sharp image from the paper bag and press (right pic)
We tried a variety of fabrics, cotton, pelmet Vilene etc. The iron method worked best with pelmet Vilene.
As the hot press has a smaller plate than a commercial one we had a look at printing a larger piece of fabric. We decided to jus print, move paper along and so on.
Because the transfer paint fades with each use there is quite a marked difference, although we thought we would just work the change into a stitched, layered background ourselves, but you could always use a fresh painted paper for each section.
You can end up with some lovely background colour with both methods in a fairly short time.
Denise used a couple of pieces of velvet cut from an old dress and heated it over a wooden stamp. This worked well with a larger stamp.
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