I often get asked if I'll set up other people's designs for shirt silkscreening. The answer is no, I won't, but I'll happily tell you how to do a relatively simple silkscreen setup. If you want more than one screen (for color separations), things get fairly complicated fairly quickly, and the amount of patience required skyrockets. I do not have said patience, so this tutorial is strictly for a single-screen design. There are other ways to do this, some involving photo-sensitive chemicals, but this is how I did it for this particular design. Most everything you need for this project can be found in a typical silkscreen starter kit: stretched screen, squeegee, screen drawing fluid, screen filler fluid, and fabric-grade silkscreen inks. In addition, you'll want a scrub brush for cleaning your screen and an iron for heat-setting your finished shirt.
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Tutorial: How to Silkscreen a Shirt |
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Back to Extras: Further Feepery |
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Step 1: Decide on a Design Details: So you have an idea for a t-shirt. The first thing you're going to want to do is to solidify that design. For this shirt, I drew a feep, scanned it in, added text, and tweaked the layout until it was what I wanted. Then I printed it out onto standard 8.5" x 11" paper. |
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Step 2: Transfer the Image Details: Take your finished design and tape it to the back of the screen, such that you're looking through the top of the screen at your design. Trace it onto the screen using a plain ol' pencil. |
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Step 3: Screen Drawing Fluid Layer Details: Remove the piece of paper with your design and flip the screen over, bottom-side up. You'll now see your pencils in a reversed image. Start painting onto the back screen, using the drawing fluid to fill in the printing areas. The drawing fluid will create a resist mask for later when you put on the filler fluid. Screen drawing fluid is extremely water-soluble on purpose, so if you mess up just rinse or dab it off. Once you're done, let the drawing fluid layer dry completely. |
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Step 4: Screen Fill Layer Details: Okay. This is the tricky part. On the same side as the drawing fluid, use some masking tape to mask off the edges of the screen to keep them clean. Do a flood fill of screen filler fluid. NOTE: You get one pass at this, as any subsequent passes will start to dissolve the drawing fluid and mess up your design. If you've never done a flood fill before, I strongly recommend practicing on a mockup design before you attack your beloved creation. To do a flood fill, take a big glop of filler fluid, more than it seems like you'll need, and put it in a fat line at one end of the screen (well away from your design). Take the squeegee, and in one smooth motion, drag the line of fluid over the screen very lightly, just to coat the screen. Now, take your squeegee and pull it down over the flood fill, this time applying pressure, such that the filler fluid - gasp! - fills the non-design parts of the screen. Don't worry if you don't get a perfect fill - you can retouch with a brush, though it is a great deal more of a pain to brush filler fluid in than it is to squeegee. Collect excess filler fluid and put it back in the bottle for later use. Let your screen dry thoroughly, preferably overnight. |
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Step 5: The Finished Screen Details: Once the filler fluid is totally try, rinse off the drawing fluid with plain ol' water. Voila! You now have a negative of your design - all the bits you want to print should be naked screen at this point. If you ever tire of your design and want to re-use the screen, you can clean off the filler fluid using dishwasher-grade liquid detergent and a scrub brush. |
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Step 6: Make a Shirt Details: Now, time to make a shirt. At last! I strongly recommend using 100% cotton shirts, as opposed to cotton/polyester blends. But eh, I've done it on cotton/poly. It just doesn't look as good, and you can't heat-set it as strongly since you have to use a cooler iron. So! On the top side of your screen, put down some masking tape to cover the gaps around the edges of the screen. This will keep your ink from gooshing up into the edges of the screen and causing an unholy mess. Position the screen over the shirt in whatever place you wish to put it. It's a good idea to put a sheet of paper or thin cardboard inside the shirt to make sure the ink doesn't go all the way through to the back of the shirt. And do your actual screening with a hard surface underneath so you get a nice, crisp image. Time for ye olde flood fill. To do a flood fill, take a big glop of fabric-grade silkscreen ink, more than it seems like you'll need, and put it in a fat line at one end of the screen. Take the squeegee, and in one smooth motion, drag the ink lightly across the screen. Now, take the squeegee and drag it down over the flood fill, applying strong pressure, such that the ink squishes through the negative design and onto the shirt. To make sure you get a good layer of color, do three or four passes. Take the screen off and observe your newly-created shirt. (Sorry I don't have a photo of this step in process, but my hands were covered in ink.) Add ink as needed to keep your shirt-pulling run going. When you're done making shirts, rinse your screen out immediately so the ink doesn't dry in there and clog it up (you can save any excess ink for later use). When the shirts have dried, take your iron, set it to cotton, and place a piece of paper over the design. Iron for about three to five minutes (depending on fabric thickness) to heat-set. It's good to turn the shirt inside-out and iron the back of the design as well. For information on the best way to keep your new shirt looking good, please see the t-shirt FAQ. |
All content and designs © Dylan Edwards. Any form of reproduction is strictly prohibited. Also, any resemblances to any persons or monsters, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental or is intended for purposes of satire.