more on silk screening

I have been sewing up a storm lately, Twist Fair being a little more than a month away. Last week I had a great run of upcycled children's clothing that I will reverse applique, silk screen, or use decorative stitching to adorn. Here is a tunic I made that has decorative stitches around the edges in a contrasting thread. The shirt was originally a large men's shirt.

I'm thinking a well placed panda would make this Ava's dream shirt. So, with her help, one was designed.

Now, my opinion about silk screening. There are several ways to make a screen, but I have been having the most fun using drawing fluid with original art. All that you need to do is draw your design on the screen fabric with a pencil then use a fine paint brush to apply the drawing fluid. In the panda image above, the black ink shows where that drawing fluid was applied. After that dries, you apply screen filler with a squeegee. After that dries, you run cold water over the screen to wash away the drawing fluid which will then be your screen design- easy! The process is super satisfying.

Like I said in my last post about silk screening, I like to do this on the cheap, so I experimented with using organza fabric from the fabric store and an embroidery hoop. It worked great and was WAY less expensive. I do like using the speedball drawing fluid and the screen filler, though I have heard of people using mod podge for screen filler before. Maybe another time.

These are the bottles of stuff to use.

This is the screen after the drawing fluid is washed away. I will probably tape it where the white is visible so no ink goes through.

And this is some teeny tiny writing I made on a wee embroidery hooped screen that I may use to make clothing labels.