Ecological printing kits as a means of mass individualization in fashion

Today, interest in natural dyeing and ecological printing methods has increased. Ecological printing is a technique that requires effort and time because it consists of stages such as mordanting the fabric, creating compositions with plants on the fabric, wrapping and tying with thread, boiling, or steaming. In addition, it is applied with many techniques and different prescriptions depending on the fabric, plant, and mordant material. The aim of this study is to investigate whether ecological printing through the kit will establish an emotional bond between the user and the product. In the study, an ecological printing kit and recipe were developed for the easy and standard implementation of the hot roll printing technique. Using 6 user kits that have not done ecological printing before, she made ecological printing with different plants on cotton t-shirts and bags. In the research, a design-based research model was used, and a think-aloud protocol was applied as a data acquisition method. In the preliminary study conducted for the development of an ecological printing kit, ecological prints were made on cotton t-shirts and bags using 8 different plants. Continued to work with eucalyptus, round eucalyptus, and chamomile with 3 or more washing fastness results of the prints. A pilot study was conducted before implementation. The success of the ecological printing kit was evaluated by examining the fastness results of the prints made by the users and the data acquisition from the think-aloud protocol. A survey was conducted after the users' experience with the ecological printing kit. Based on the survey, the difficulties experienced by the users while making ecological printing were determined, and solutions were offered for cases such as making mistakes in the iron blanket preparation step, encountering difficulties with page transitions in the file accessed via QR code, and insufficient example of showing only the bag image in the instruction.