I haven’t done any screen printing since last year. But I decided I want to make a few shirts as gifts. So I dug into the closet, and went through my screens. A couple have logos that I might want to print again sometime. But one screen had an image that I printed on a t-shirt for my nephew. So I pulled it out last night. I planned on reclaiming it this morning, but never got around to doing it. But tonight I took the time to clean it. I took it downstairs to the big wash sink in our utility room. I poured some of the stencil remover and brushed it around with a nylon bristle brush. Then I sprayed it with hot water. Very little of the emulsion came off. Well it has been on the screen for a long time! So I put some more stencil remover on the screen, and brushed it around. This time I left it to sit for a few minutes. Then I sprayed it again. This time most of the old emulsion came off. I sprinkled a little detergent on, and scrubbed it. I sprayed the screen again. I left the screen downstairs to dry. Hopefully tomorrow night I will be able to coat the screen.
Screen printing t-shirts on just one side is pretty easy. I tell you how to do it in my pages here. But screen printing a t-shirt on both the front and the back requires a few more steps.
First I will print one side of the shirt. It doesn’t matter which side. Then I will lay the shirt out to let the ink dry completely. Later, maybe even the next day, I will print the shirt on the other side. It is probably possible to print both sides in short succession, but it would be hard to keep the wet ink from smearing, or coming off on other shirts. I suppose if you have a flash dryer, you could dry the ink enough so that it would be safe. But that’s more of a commercial type operation. Flash dryers are expensive. So print the once side, let dry, then print the other side. Let it dry.
Now that both sides are printed, you need to heat set the ink. I do my heat setting in the oven. When the ink gets hot, it gets soft, and can come off on other stuff. So what I do is lay a clean piece of paper over the dried design on one side. Usually the smaller printed part. Then I will fold the shirt and leave the other printed part face up, not touching anything. This way, if the hot soft ink transfers a little, it will only be to the piece of paper, not to another part of the shirt.
I wanted to screen print some custom sweatshirts for my dad and his wife. I wanted to make something that look professional, but unique, and personalized for them. They are both love playing golf, and that gave me an idea. I would make up a ficticious country club, and design a logo for it. I used the name of their street for the name of the ficticious country club: Firestone Court Country Club. Searching around on the internet, I found a simple shield graphic. I loaded that into Photoshop, and cleaned it up, erasing some of the stuff that was already there. I found some more graphics of golf balls, and golf clubs. I played with these and used the golf ball graphics. I inserted a big cursive F and C inside the sheild. I added the name of the fake country club. I also added the name of their city and state so that they would know that these were personalized for them, and not coincidentally named after their street. I debated about addind their names, but decided against it. But I still wanted to add something else for some humor. So I labelled his sweatshirt “Senior Golf Instructor” to poke a little fun about his age. I labelled her sweat shirt “General Manager” to show that she was the boss. The shirts were fun to make, and I think they really enjoyed them.
Occasionally we all make mistakes! And when you are printing a tee shirt or a sweatshirt, it kind of sucks to mess it up. T-shirts cost money! Sweatshirts cost money! If you are using water based ink and you goof, the shirts can probably be saved!
I was printing a couple one-off sweatshirts as gifts. These sweatshirts were thicker and software than I had printed before. And I was printing white on to a dark shirt which is hard enough. I had a hard time getting the design to be fully printed. The first time I tried, the logo was only partially printed on the shirt. So I carefully laid the screen back down on to the shirt and tried again. But now the design looked kind of blurred. I tried the other sweatshirt, and got the first design to print nice. But now I had a misprinted sweatshirt, and I still need to print another design onto a second shirt. I didn’t particularly want to go buy another one for $6 or $7 or $8 bucks, or whatever I paid. I wanted to try to save this one. The ink hadn’t been heat set yet. In fact, it hadn’t even dried yet.
So I quickly took the shirt down to my rinse tub where I have a hose attached, with a spray nozzle. I sprayed the not yet dried design with a strong jet of warm water. The design seemed to be washed away. I through the sweatshirt into the washing machine, and afterward the dryer. There was no sign of the misprinted design.
I took a couple more tried to get the design printed properlly on the sweatshirt. Fortunatly I didn’t have to go buy a new shirt.
I love Adobe Photoshop! I don’t even own the current version. In fact the version I use for making screen printing artwork is many years old. Yet even this antique version of Adobe Photoshop is my primary graphic editing tool! You could probably buy an old version of Adobe Photoshop on eBay for alomst nothing.
The feature I use the most is called layers. To envision how layers work, picture a small stack of transparent plastic sheets. You draw some design on one sheet, and then you can see it through the stack. Then on another sheet, you can draw another part of the design. Now when you stack them, you see both parts together. This is how layers work.
With layers, I usually start with a white background, and then create a transparent layer over it. I draw on the transparent layer in black. I might draw some design or whatever on this layer. If I decide I want to add text, I create another transparent layer. Then I put the text on this layer. Why the layers are so useful is that all of the elements are on separate layers. If I mess up on part, I can just redo that part without messing up the rest. I can move parts around easily without disturbing the rest of the parts.
The easiest way to create new layers in Photoshop is to select something on the current layer, and copy it to the clipboard using ctrl-c. If you have the little boox that displays the lays open, you will see a “floating layer”. This is a temporary layer that holds the stuff on the clipboard. Click on the floating layer label, and give it a name. The temporary “floating layer” will now become a regular layer that is nwo the top layer.
If you look at the box that displays the layers, you will see little eyes icons. The eyes show that that layer is visible. If you toggle the eye, that layer will become invisible. This is usefull if you want to see how something looks without a particular layer, but don’t want to get rid of the layer permanently.
When you are done, and the graphic looks like what you want it to, you can export the graphic as a tif, gif, or whatever other format you want. Adobe Photoshop will export your artwork to this new format as a SINGLE layer. Be sure to save your work in the Adobe Photoshop format as well. This will keep all of your layers. So if you want to come back and change your design, you will still have everything in layers.
Have fun!