Print and dye details
A Betty Barclay 1940’s dress, which is printed on an artificial silk look-a-like fabric, rayon with a small motif.
The background colour has been dyed as the colour is the same density on the front of the fabric and the back.
Because they have dyed all of the fabric, the white of the design is a discharge print.
This is where the base fabric is dyed with a dye type and colour which can be removed with a controlled bleaching paste, discharge.
Because the white of the design is achieved in this manner, to maintain the registration of the rest of the design in line with the white, the other colours will be printed with coloured discharge, enabling all of the fabric to be processed at the same time in the same manner. The coloured discharge works with a printing paste which removes and adds colour at the same time when printed.
It is more common for the print paste to be applied by screen-printing. There is a minimum amount of paste which needs to be applied to the base cloth for it to achieve this effect which is harder to do via a roller method of production which tends to apply less dye stuff to cloth.
The white discharge colour has penetrated totally through from the front to the back of the cloth; the 2 printed blue colours have not.
Again, this is a common effect from discharge, the white discharge paste is stronger than the coloured discharge and is therefore able to remove the base dyed colour all the way through the fabric.
3 colour print, white, 2 blues.
Further Reading:
Kendall, T The Fabric and Yarn Dyers Handbook, Collins and Brown, ISBN 1-85585-879-7
Kinnersly-Taylor, J Dyeing and Screen Printing on Fabric, A & C Black, London ISBN 0-7136-5180-6
Wells, K Fabric Dyeing and Printing, Conran Octopus Ltd ISBN 1-85029-866-1
