Custom Fabric Help Needed

[Art Andrews]

So I am working on a Johnny Ringo costume from Tombstone and can't find a suitable material for his bandanna so I have decided the only solution is to have the material made.

The fabric is black with a repeating pattern of geometric shapes printed primarily on one side. On the back side of the fabric (which is quite thin) the fabric appears to be all black, but when you look more closely, you can see the geometric shape barely visible from the other side. What this results is is a print that is strongly colored on one side and almost has the appearance of a subdued version on the backside. From what I can tell, the material is just a thin cotton, but possibly silk as many were...

There are a number of sites online that will make custom printed material from uploaded designs. However, they don't really offer what I am looking for. Here is a typical response from one of these type of printers when I asked them about replicating the material I need.


"I'm afraid that there is very little pigment ink that bleeds through to the other side of our fabrics with the possible exception of our semi-sheer cotton lawn. I would encourage you to try your design out on a swatch of this fabric to see if the print results will work for you. I should mention here, though, that pigment inks aren't capable of rendering a true, saturated black, so the darkest black in your design will be rendered as a very dark charcoal gray. This can still "read" as black, though, if it's in small doses rather than large fields, or if it's used with lots of lighter colors."

So basically, I am not going to get a black backside to the cloth and would be lucky if the design came through in any way at all.

So, does anyone know anything about fabric dying and how this might be achieved without me having to buy thousands of dollars worth of custom material?

I have attached a photo to give a better idea of what both the top side and back side look like.

 

[the_batdemon]

I'm sure you've thoroughly researched this. I think most of those lower priced online sites can only print onto white. You need white ink on black material
have you looked for a place that prints large display banners? being in Vegas, there has to be one or two, given all of the conventions there. I was just at an open house for a vendor of ours that uses a Vutek printer. It has white ink capabilities and can print onto almost any type of material. It's pigment ink based and comes out like screen print.

 

[Shylaah]

I can't see but the one picture with the guy who has the scarf on, but can see enough to tell the pattern.....

If this is black on the back side, I don't know how that would have been printed on, the light color on the black......I might be some kind of color removal or bleaching out technique, but seems that would make more of a noticeable pattern on the back??

Maybe it's done with paint instead. That would show up bold on the front and does seep through just a tad on the back (my only experience has been some stamping on some muslin fabric for a quilt project using paint and rubber stamps). If the fabric is a true or nearly true black, which according to the person you contacted, can't be had via pigmented inks, then perhaps the design is stamped on the front with paint.

How big is this item? Regular bandanna size or so? If you had a rubber stamp made up with part of the pattern, wouldn't be too tortuous to do a square yard or so of it after some practice.........

Another alternative could be making a stencil of the pattern and stenciling it onto black fabric.

Shylaah

A good place to get rubber stamps online Simon's Stamps
The art mount my preferred method for doing hand stamping, more control......

 

[MaulWalker]

I've stenciled on fabric with Jacquard fabric paint and had bleed through like that. Given the size of that pattern, it might be worth investigating silk screening.

 

[Funky]

Okay, Art. Thank you. Thank you VERY much! I didn't realize you were doing a super-uber 1,000% accurate Ringo costume. Now I have to go back and re-visit my Earp get-up as I cheated in a couple of places and used a few "close enoughs".

 

[LeAngeSolitaire]

Have you tried someone like Spoonflower? They are an online custom fabric printing site.