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.

simple silk screening with kids (or not)

Now that I've discovered that silk screening is one of my favorite things to do, I am busy figuring out how to do it on the cheap.  Buying a pre-stretched frame is simply out of the question, them being about $25 a pop.  I've stretched the screen fabric over a frame used for stretching canvas (which worked well), and I imagine that using a thrift store frame would be equally handy.  Yesterday, with a whole afternoon unplanned and stretching out before us, I was hoping to intoduce my kids to the joys of screen printing, but, alas, had no frame of any obvious sort around the house.  While rifling through stuff in the basement I spied a scrap of foam core - Why not?  I cut a frame out of it and stapled screen fabric to it.  We had so much fun and Ava and Harry were amazed by the results.  Here is a step-by-step tutorial.  I really encourage you to give it a go.  It is so so satisfying.

Materials:

-foam core

-contact paper (shelf liner)

-sharpie pen

-craft knife

-12xx silk screen fabric (you can get this online or at an art store)

-screen printing inks (also at the art store)

-squeegee

-stapler

-masking tape

-plastic spoon or tongue depressor

Directions:

1) Cut a frame out of a piece of foam core.  You can make this any size, just be sure that your squeegee can fit. Staple screen printing fabric so it is really tight.  This takes some fiddling and pulling but it isn't hard to do.

2) Have your child draw a really simple image onto the paper side of the contact paper.  You cut it out with a craft knife.

3) Peel the paper backing off the contact paper and carefully stick it to the underside of the screen (that would be the flat side facing the table) positioning it so it is centered in the window.  Smooth out any bubbles and be sure that it is flat against the screen , especially by the design cuts.  This will keep the ink where it is supposed to be.

On the inking side (the side with the foamcore frame on top) tape the window with masking tape so no ink can escape out the sides.

4) Now you are ready to print.  Gather t-shirts, blank cards, paper and whatever you want to print onto.  You can make about 20 prints before the contact paper wants to start peeling away. If you are using t-shirts, put a piece of cardboard or paper between the layers because the ink will bleed through.  

5) Put a couple spoonfuls of ink on one side of the image and then pull the ink across the screen with the squeegee.  Be sure that the ink went into all the design spaces.  You can pull the ink across a couple times, but don't do it too many times or the image will look a little blurry, not crisp.

You can see here that the ink hasn't filled all the design space, so she will have to pull more ink across.

6) Lift the screen off the print and hang print to dry.  Repeat process over and over again.  Make stationary, posters, napkins, placemats, shirts, flags, etc.  When done with image (really done, as you will be throwing it away with this method), remove from the screen, wash the ink off the screen thoroughly and save for another image another time.  We used the same frame and screen for Harry's design after Ava was finished.

Here are some cards the kids made.

and some t-shirts, too!

Note: I have posted more about silk screening so if you're interested, check out October 5th post.

winter weeds and screen printing

I finally did it. I sat down over coffee with a couple of friends, took out my Winter Weed Finder by Dorcas S. Miller (illustrated by Ellen Amendolara, bless her) and drew several things, including a wild leek that I successfully made into a silk screen (only successful on the second attempt, but successful, just the same). I have been wanting to silk screen forever. I even bought all the supplies a couple months ago, but that first drawing felt so important to get right that I was immobilized for a good while. When I finally decided to not take myself so seriously, I drew the picture (so simple) and then proceeded to attempt using the photo emulsion method (which required going to the copy shop to make a transparency, allowing the photo emulsion to dry on the screen in the dark of my closet, away from the exposing effects of the big bad sun for so long it seemed like I'd never again be able to change my clothes without considering what to grab before opening and slamming the door shut again...phew...story not over. Then came the burning of the image under the brightest lights I could find in the basement, which apparently, were not bright enough). Basically, on that first pass of ink onto paper, came a solid swath of blackness. No image. Hmm. I decided to use the drawing fluid method and it worked great.

Silk screening is magical. The print looks so much cooler than the drawing and as long as you have things to print, you can keep going and going. Here are some things that I made after printing thrifted t-shirts. First is a skirt that was a 2xl super wide men's shirt. It was wide enought to make a lovely a-line. I printed the image several times along the bottom and used fold over elastic to make the waistband. Pretty. Comfy. Kinda my perfect everday skirt.

The next project was a large red thrifted t-shirt where I silk screened one image onto the chest. I turned this into a little swing dress/ tunic for Ava. She even modeled it for me in Cowboy boots! For those of you who know her, this may be a surprise. It is even more of a surprise that she asked to keep it instead of allowing me to put it in my ETSY shop. Sure!

Well!