How to buy/make B&W checker fabric in large quantity?

[Florian Jourda]

Hi everyone,

Some background:

Me and my friends (mostly from San Francisco) are working on an mutant vehicle project called "the Checkerboard" for this year burn. The entire vehicle is going to be covered with black and white checker fabric (the squares are 25cm/1 foot wide), and crew members will be wearing (sexy) spandex suits with a similar pattern (with 1 inch wide squares):




We are also building a big led screen with 25cm wide color squares, which - we hope - will be visually stunning.
We are currently working on the project at the art community Nimby in Oakland and making excellent progress in general (mechanics, structure, electronics...).

My questions:
We are now trying to buy/make the checker fabric. We need about 80 square meters (95 square yards) printed on a light fabric. We would like to ask the community if anyone knew:

1) What's the best way to buy such fabric online?
We have tried online, but could not find a pattern with big enough squares (we want them to be 25cm/1 foot wide to match the led screen). Also on-demand fabric printing is about $25 per linear yard, which is too expensive for our extremely simple pattern.

2) What's the best way to buy such fabric locally? Does anyone know someone in the fabric printing industry that could give us a good price? Maybe around $600.

3) What's the best way to make such fabric?
We could buy a roll of white fabric and paint it in black with screens or stencils, but it seems to be hard to cleanly print such a wide and long area. All the tutorials I found are only for small projects like screen painting t-shirts; here it's a rather industrial project

Thanks a lot for your help!

[some seeing eye]

It would be perfect for screen printing if you can find an ink compatible with your fabric. Or stencil and aerosol paint from a paint gun. You could cut a one row stencil pattern from 12' masonite, bender board or laminate. Print odd rows, let dry, then even. You can get wide fabric from Rosebrand if you don't have it already. They do custom printing at wide widths, and may know others that do too. You might be able to economize on how saturated = costly the black printing is. (You should test your pattern with variations of magic glasses, light the inside with UV and be sure the fabric is UV reactive = has fabric brighteners) Best with the project!

[Ugly Dougly]

You could cut these squares out and sew them together like a quilt.

[TomServo]

If you go the screen printing route, and can get your hands on a screen....you don't even need to burn the screen. Simple duct tape or packing tape, arranged in a checkerboard pattern will work.
I would get my hands on cheap tiles, arrange them in the pattern and just spray paint over them. Regular spray paint will adhere to most fabrics for quite awhile. I miss my arts and craps days.

[Jax Dee]

I needed to do something similar years ago for a play, I was building sets and we had to paint larg areas of material. We built a large simple wooden frame (made out of two 2x4's and two 2x8's) and stapled the edge of the fabric down to the frame. Then we painted what we needed, let dry, and used a screwdriver to pull the fabric off the staples/frame. Then we stapled the next bit of fabric down. Repeat until done. Obviously you could build your frame to fit whatever size you need and can manage at once.

[C.f.M.]

I would buy sheets, tape off squares, and spray paint.

Otherwise, probably cut the squares and sew them all together. Also using sheets for fabric.

Make your own at: http://www.spoonflower.com/welcome

[Bob]

If you paint it yourself, a carpenter's chalkline would help with the layout. Probably want to fill it with blue chalk, but keep in mind pigmented chalk will bleed a bit. Sometimes I use white chalk mixed with a pinch of pigmented chalk.

If the vehicle has a stout frame I'd consider doing all or part of it using painted 1/4" plywood panels. Prime it white on both sides to avoid the sheets curling up like potato chips in the desert. Conventional paint etc. from Kelly Moore, Benjamin Moore or wherever is relatively cheap, and you don't have to sweat a custom tarp/billboard/sail shop's lead time.

[C.f.M.]

If the truck's white, cut black squares in vinyl sticker stuff and just stick them on?

[Bob]

Or fur. You know you want it.

[Florian Jourda]

Thanks everyone for your ideas.

I think I will go with a semi-industrial process to process the 40 yards of fabric. I will build a big 2 yard by 1 yard stencil in PVC and use paint gun with glycero paint. There is a lot of trickiness with this system:
- how do make a stencil with so many holes
- how to provide space for the previously painted parts to dry
- how to keep the previously painted part no to stick to the bottom of the stencil when the next part is being painted
- how to force the fabric to be completely pushed against the stencil so that the edges are sharp and not blurry
- how to keep the paint gun mist from reaching the rest of the fabric

But I have some good vision about how to do that.

Thanks again.

[Rabbette]

I'm confused... where is this fabric going? On the truck? Or is this for a screen?

[Florian Jourda]

The fabric is gonna cover the entire trailer and parts of the truck. It will be stretched on top of a metal structure and act as a shading structure.

[Dr. Pyro]

I don't know why you even bother. After an hour or so it will be covered in dust and be all one color anyway.

[anora]

Hello,

Nice to see this collection...
I want to know that what type of fabric you used for painted checks in truck... And what type of fabric you used to paint your screen. And why you are doing this type of painting..

[Irreverent Moniker]

Or fur. You know you want it.

ooh, i want that coat

[trilobyte]

Go to local Bay Area business called Discount Fabrics, their outlet/warehouse is at 11th & Howard. Preferably swing by during a weekday, and ask at the desk if you can talk to Linda (their fabric buyer, a very nice/helpful person). Let her know what you want, she's got loads of swatch books and may be able to put her hands on the material you need (if they don't already have it). They (and she) were very helpful for us when we had some specific fabric needs for an art car project a few years back, and of course we've also shopped there quite a bit for various costume/clothing projects. Hopefully they can help you out!