New shirt alert

It's not all machine knitting around here!

Last week I took a screen printing class at NYC Resistor, a lovely hackerspace in Brooklyn.

It was their first time teaching this class, and fittingly they taught a screen printing technique that was new to me!

We were asked to bring in a vector art file. I really let myself get in my head about art for previous screen printing classes, so this time I vowed to do the first dumb idea that made me laugh. I was inspired by a recent delightful discovery in my Monday night gaming group and spent a half hour goofing on it in Inkscape.

Enough talk. Here are some process photos! (with more talk as captions)

It starts with cutting our digital design into a sheet of vinyl. Here's NYC Resistor's vinyl cutter.
Next, pick out the parts of the vinyl you want to see in the final design. It's mirrored here but will be flipped for the final design.
Next, apply the vinyl to the bottom of the frame. I used transfer tape for this and it was tedious and painstaking work! Take your time on this step!!
Vinyl applied to the bottom of the screen, as seen through the top of the screen. This is how the design will appear on the finished work. Some duct tape is used to cover over the parts of the screen not covered by the vinyl. You can see the design says "Practis free cactis" alongside a cartoon potted cactus.
Our hosts Woody and Mean Gene helped align and mount our screens to the press.
Woody applied a line of ink.
Here's the shirt on the platen after pulling the squeegee twice. Brown ink shining on a purple t-shirt. Looks good!
We dried the (water-based) ink with a few passes of a heat gun for travel.
Here it is at home the next day. I heat-set the ink more permanently with an iron on high with a piece of parchment paper between.

And here it is after washing! I tried to match the stoic look of the cactus. 🌵

Many thanks to NYC Resistor and our instructors Woody and Mean Gene.

Thanks also to the other folks in the class, who were fun and chill. Their designs game out great, but that's their business.

I look forward to doing some more screen printing at a future NYC Resistor craft night!

Files

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#hackerspace #screen-printing #class #NYCResistor
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