Down-n-dirty Screen Printing on T-shirts

I recently created a new t-shirt design for my ceramist friend Joey Sheehan, owner of Melting Mountain Pottery in Asheville, NC. I had the screen made, and we did some printing last night in the "man-cave-studio" to test it out. Joey learned the process and gets to keep the screen and print as much as he wants...tees, gift bags, aprons, etc. With a lot of test prints and trial and error, we finally got some nice prints. Once you get the feel of the squeegee pressure and the amount of ink coverage, good prints come fairly easy. We're letting these dry overnight, setting the ink with a hot iron and then a smaller front-print design can be screened.

 

Here's a great basic video (Click on image below to watch) on screen printing in your kitchen on a flat table..no fancy equipment necessary. This guy used a mylar stencil on the bottom of the screen, but the concept of inking and printing is the same.