About Cloth Edition
Cloth Edition Printshop is a screen-print shop for custom printed textiles. Our team of craftsmen work with traditional methods and materials to hand-print on fabric. Our shop is capable of printing on almost any fabric, and has produced printed textiles for decades.
Working primarily on fabric with repeating patterns, Cloth Edition Printshop offers custom yardage printing, limited edition prints and products. We work with interior designers, fashion designers and artists to create custom hand-printed fabrics for their projects.
Cloth Edition Printshop is a full service printshop, offering design consultation, screen making, custom color matching and custom printing. We also offer fabric sampling and pillow production.
Our Process
Cloth Edition Printshop is a traditional textile screen print shop. We use heritage tools and traditional techniques that have been relied upon to print fabric for decades. While we keep many of the tools and techniques, we use modern materials that are more eco-friendly and sustainable for our printers to work with.
Screen printing relies on stencils on a mesh screen to create each print. Each color in each pattern needs its own screen. To make these stencils, we use a traditional photo process to transfer the design from a transparent film positive to the screen. After exposure, the screen is washed to open the image areas of the mesh, thus allowing for ink to pass through.
Once all the screens for a pattern are washed out, each screen is registered to a straight edge and to the other layers of the image. This allows us to print each color accurately in relation to the fabric and to the other layers. We utilize screen hardware and a rail system to place each screen on the design within 1/32 of an inch.
Custom Color Matching
Cloth Edition Printshop provides precise color matching for all our clients. We use a water-based pigment system that is eco-friendly, and has high durability and light-fastness. Every color we match for a client is retained in both a physical standard and a formula of the pigments used. This system allows us to precisely match each color every time we print.
To achieve each color match, we use digital scales that allow us to measure very fine quantities of each pigment. After all the pigments are added to the base, we use a screen and do a test print on the final fabric. This allows us to see precisely how each color looks printed on the fabric, and we can make adjustments as needed.
Once a color match has been approved, we save the formulation so that we can replicate the color. Due to the nature of printing on fabric, each dye lot of a particular fabric has some color variation. Our system allows for us to adjust each color so that the match is true to the original color standard, not just true to the formula. The majority of the inks we use are transparent by nature, so the color of the fabric does affect the color of the ink. We also offer opaque and metallic ink colors.
Fabric Sourcing
Cloth Edition Printshop offers custom fabric sourcing to our clients. The right fabric for a print makes the difference between something that is nice, and something amazing. We have the experience and knowledge to find the right fabric for the right project. Fabric weight, width, weave and fiber type are all considerations we make while sourcing fabric. Cloth Edition Printshop has provided fabrics for upholstery, drapery, wall covering, fashion and garments, and acoustic projects.
For screen print projects, Cloth Edition keeps a standard range of basic print grounds available to our clients. These print grounds are all Belgian Linen, as this has become the textile of choice in the interiors market. Many of the custom projects we work on require a specific fabric weave and fiber type to meet the criteria of the end use. Some of our clients also want a colored ground for their collection, which we source or get custom dyed in order to get the precise color and fabric the client needs.
Our History
Cloth Edition Printshop grew out of the efforts of Anne Kirk to continue the tradition of hand printed textiles in San Francisco. Kirk has worked in the interior design and screen printing industry for over 30 years, and brings that depth knowledge to Cloth Edition. Already sharing the same warehouse and printing equipment with the last yardage printing shop in San Francisco, Anne Kirk and printer Ryan Harrison took over in 2022 and started Cloth Edition Printshop. Expanding the range of the shop from an interiors focus, Cloth Edition Printshop is a versatile and dynamic print shop, producing yardage for artists and designers across industries.