Adventures in Silk Screening

I had a very happy moment today when I received my Martha Stewart Craft of the Day email and the article was titled "saying good-bye to old, beloved sweaters and reworking them into a cozy patchwork blanket".    Does that sound just like something you read this week in My Crafting Bee?  Me and Martha both writing about reusing old sweaters in the same week?  It's mind blogging!

Today's post is about silk screening.  I recently took my Girl Scouts to the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, MA (http://www.athm.org).  It's a neat place to visit and offers many classes.  While silk screening is not something I would try at home, it's fun to take as a class...as long as you are patient and have lots of time for trial and error.

We first started by making a drawing on paper.  Next we placed a transparency on top and traced the drawing with a black sharpie.  We learned that thick lines work better than thin ones.  I drew this paisley-filled heart.




The  next step was the tricky one.  The transparency is loaded into a machine and sits under a screen coated with emulsion.  After eight minutes, the design was burned into the screen and showed up as a faint yellow line.  After rinsing the screen a bit, the yellow washed out and the screen now showed my design as clear.


This screen is placed over a t-shirt and ink is brushed over the screen.  The ink only comes through in the clear parts of my design, so that the design comes out on the t-shirt.



Here are the finished products that my daughter and I made. We love the way they turned out.  Hearts and bows just in time for Valentine's Day!


We did learn a few things from this process:

1. Silk screening is tricky.
2. I'll never open a silk-screening studio.
3. I'll appreciate hand made silk- screened  items more when I see them in boutiques

All in all, it was a fun experience and we all learned a lot about something new.  Because I never miss an opportunity to shop, I had to check out the gift shop area of the museum and picked up these beautiful place mats that were made using a loom in the museum.  Aren't they adorable?