Surface Ornamentation Techniques: Printing, Dyeing, Embroidery and Embellishment
What this domain tests
Surface ornamentation questions test your ability to match colour application to fibre and to choose a decoration method that suits the product, cost and batch size.
Core rules
- Dye–fibre substantivity: reactive and vat dyes for cellulose; acid dyes for wool, silk and nylon; disperse dyes for polyester; direct dyes for cotton but with moderate fastness.
- Dyeing methods: exhaust (rope, package, jigger), pad-dry-cure for continuous ranges, and garment dyeing for fashion batches.
- Printing methods: block (hand, repeat by registration), screen (flat-bed or rotary, one screen per colour), roller, transfer and digital (no screens, short runs, high colour count).
- Print styles: direct, discharge (destroys ground colour), resist (wax, paste, tie), pigment (binder, no washing) and burnout.
- Embroidery adds relief: running, stem, chain, satin and French knot. Embellishment includes appliqué, mirror work, sequins, beads and zardosi.
Worked example
A 100% polyester dark navy scarf needs a crisp white small motif in a 300-piece order. Choose disperse dye for the ground, then digital pigment printing for the motif, or screen print with a white pigment and binder. Reasoning: disperse dye is needed for polyester; white cannot be achieved by discharge on navy easily because polyester is hard to discharge cleanly; digital or pigment print avoids long screen setup and works for 300 pieces. If the order were 30,000 pieces of cotton, reactive dye ground plus discharge or screen print would be more economical.
Traps
Using a cotton dye on polyester; forgetting steaming or fixation after printing; judging fastness by eye instead of grey scale; printing a dark ground with a thin resist without testing; ignoring effluent from washing.