The gorgeous and elegant silk scarves are here!

Silk is a difficult fabric to print on, partly because it's so delicate and partly - let's be honest - because it's so expensive. Thankfully, we have a very easy way to print on this beautiful textile: reactive printing! We've talked a bit about reactivity, but as a recap, reactivity means a chemical reaction occurs on the fabric between the specially formulated pre-treatment and the super hot steam. This reaction occurs after the textile has been printed and it is what sets the color permanently. Reactive printing is the only permanent way to print on natural fabrics, with the added bonus of making your fabric super soft for real life use!

You may have heard of another method of printing on natural fabrics called pigment printing. Unlike reactive inks that penetrate into fiber cells, pigment printing is a surface printing. Pigment ink is a combination of color and glue. After the fabric is printed, the glue is heated to adhere the ink to the surface of the fabric. Since the ink does not transfer into the fibers of the fabric, prints are prone to cracking, run and often fade with use and washing. The glue used in the ink will stiffen the fabric. While pigment printing is a simpler process and suitable for low-use projects, the results cannot match reactive printing in terms of vibrancy, softness, and print durability. We've actually tried pigment printing on silk twice in the past! We were never satisfied with the darkened results, so we knew we had to invest in reactivity to properly print natural fabrics. We hope all of our customers benefit from this new system!