CMU School of Drama


Thursday, September 24, 2009

Fabric Printing with Citra-Solv

Instructables: "Any photograph, image or design that looks good in black and white is a great candidate for printing with Citra-Solv. It's permanent, can be washed in the washer, takes about 2 minutes to do and it's cheap and easy."

6 comments:

Annie J said...

Wow. I'm already in love with this article, and can think of SO many applications for this! As opposed to using transfer paper or silk screening, this appears to be a cheap and easy method to transfer images. I can't wait to try this out myself! I do wish it could be done in color, but maybe the fabric could be painted after the image was transferred. I do wonder why the citra-solv has the ability to do this, and why it's sold as a solvent (and at Whole Foods, no less) but hopefully this substance isn't too toxic.

dmxwidget said...

This is pretty cool stuff! Just think of the possibilities with this...for costumes or smaller scenic elements. The only downside is you are limited to the size of the paper of a copied image. I wonder if you can use a printer/copier that uses color toner? Something interesting to see is that Citra-Solv product isn't actually designed for this but for cleaning applications...this is a pretty cool use for it.

Robert said...

this article is very insetting and the way in which you can do a few steps and you can get an amazing thing in the end. it seems like is pretty easy and cheep to do and then you can get what every you wont on fabric and get it to look like it took a long time. also the steps seem pretty easy. so i would like to try this and see if it is as easy and comes out pretty well.

Rachel Robinson said...

I agree with dmxwidget that this has several great possibilities for scenic work. Yes, the author of this article admits that it can only be used on a small photos, but if you could somehow make a machine that could spread large quantities of the citra-solv over large surfaces, it would have a very interesting effect. Perhaps you might be able to make some sort of backdrop with it. And of course, you could do smaller scenic art, but it would be cool to do it on a much larger scale.

ewilkins09 said...

This is awesome. I just want to try this to see how it would work out/if it actually works. I agree with Robert in that it seems like it would be easy and would come out pretty well. I love sewing and I would love to make something from scratch and see how citra-solv would work with a costume design or even something as simple as pajama pants. Maybe a certain black and white pattern would turn out to look awesome on stage.

MONJARK said...

I could see this useful in making patterns on a large scale. It would be time consuming, but at a place like cmu where the labor is free (or any theater with extra interns), this could be useful, though time consuming.