Another TechShop Story...

December 28, 2011

The day after Christmas, I got a text from my friend, Carrie-

Rick and the boys are going a basketball game, wanna take a silk screening class at TechShop tonight?

Me-

Sure!

[caption id="attachment_4076" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Our instructor, Sonja, demonstrated the process first..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4075" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The we got started on our designs. There are lots of ways to come up with an image- trace something, free hand drawing, there's a vinyl cutting machine at TechShop that can cut letters... Carrie and I created our images on the computer. We printed them out and taped our designs to a piece of vinyl..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4074" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="It's not easy doing this with dull blades, but we persevered. Note to all: bring your own X-acto knife with plenty of blades. This is 'Stencil Cutting 101'- why didn't I think of that?!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4073" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Here's mine... of course :-)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4078" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Once the design (stencil) is cut out..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4079" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="You peel the vinyl backing leaving the stencil flat on the table."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4080" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Then you carefully set your screen on top, press everything down..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4084" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="and tape off the surrounding areas so the paint only goes where we want it to."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4083" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Then you choose the paint your want, stir in the catalyst (without catalyst, the paint will never really cure),"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4081" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="mix well..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4082" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Great example for the kids, Carrie..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4085" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anyhoo! Then you mount the screen on the silk screen device thingy..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4086" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="You load the screen with paint..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4087" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Use the squeegee to spread some paint across the entire image- this is called the flood coat..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4088" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Then it's time for the 'money' pass... no pressure, Carrie!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4089" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="You check your work (we did a few practice runs on scraps of fabric before the 'real' thing on our t-shirts)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4090" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="And get super proud of your work- looks great! Feels great!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4091" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Then you lay your shirt out to dry. When it's dry to the touch you can toss it in the dryer for 10 minutes or so OR iron the back side of it for several minutes to set the ink."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4095" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="See, here's mine! I would've waited for Carrie to send her pics of me doing all of this, but I was too excited to post our project!"][/caption]