has been the most exciting part of mask-making for me. It began when I started making masks for Love Masks. I wanted the mask themes to be fun for the kids who would be wearing them. One little girl was into ballet but finding fabric that showed black ballet dancers proved very difficult. That started me on the path of creating my own fabric for the masks. The Black Panther ones were the biggest hit!
I started by drawing on the material with fabric pens but that is very time-consuming and I’m also not a great artist. There are; however, a lot of wonderful images out there. You can use graphics that you find online providing that they’re high enough resolution (ie: the picture would take up most of a computer screen). Scans of artwork and photographs also work well. The easiest way to get high quality images is to go to a vector service. Two of my favourites are vectorstock and Mujka. I’m not going to address the copyright issues, but like in other situations, not all images are legal to use.
So, I could access nice impages but how to get them onto fabric? I looked into printing services but they are all required a pretty high run with the minimum order usually being around $200. I only need a small sheet of fabric for each mask so I figured that if I could find a way to print with my inkjet printer that would work. There is a ton of information about fabric printing with inkjet printers and it’s a very fun internet rabbit hole to follow. There are interesting facts about the History of fabric printing, a myriad of techniques and enough eye candy to satisfy even the most voracious fabricophile.
After all the research and experimentation, here’s summary of what I found works best for me (so far).
The material you print on makes a huge difference in terms of clarity of the image and colourfastness. After MUCH trial and error I found that a fabric made of cotton and at least 40 % lyocell works best. I use the Nattjasmin sheets that you can order from IKEA. It holds the ink very well and has a nice, slightly shiny finish.
The printer ink also makes a big difference. Thee pigment ink works better than dye-based ink. The Epson printers seem to be particularly good for fabric printing. I bought an Epson Pro WF-7840. and it works well but if you can afford it, the EcoTank Pro ET-16600 is even better. It has a wider printing tray which is not necessary for masks but would be good for other printing projects. More importantly though it uses refillable ink. The cartridge replacements on the WF printers are expensive, so if you plan on doing a lot of fabric printing the ET series would be worth it in the long run.
( update: 2025 – I bought an EcoTank Photo ET-8550 All-in-One Wide-format Supertank Printer so now I can print up to 13″ wide and limitless length. I love it!)
Fabric treatment also really helps to make the end result colourfast. There are recipes for DIY solutions but I found the BJ Bubble Jet Set 2000 is much better. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available in Canada and the shipping from the States is costly.
Finally the type of graphic you use makes a difference. Obviously, it needs to be high resolution but not all hi-rez images work well for masks. The graphics that work best have crisp outlines and strong contrasting colours. Pastel watercolour-type images are often too ‘mushy’ to show up well.