ALWAYS SOMETHING TO LEARN

Every day is a learning process no matter what you do.  But it is especially true when it comes to screen printing.  Every design presents a new challenge and new opportunities to learn.  Over the last couple days I worked on my biggest custom order to date.  The order was for 15 shirts for a girls soccer team.  It was a blast designing the shirt and it turned out AWESOME!  I delivered the shirts yesterday and the girls loved them so much they plan on wearing them to school on Monday.  :)  It's a great feeling knowing you made someone happy. :)

The shirt was a one color print, front and back.  The front of the shirt took me no time at all to print.  The back of the shirt was quite a challenge because they wanted player names on each shirt.  That means 15 DIFFERENT names.  Now, if I had a heat press and plotter I could have heat pressed the names in vinyl lettering and finished the names in less then 2 hours.  But I do not have any of that equipment so I had to screen print 15 different names.  YIKES!!  Normally that would mean 15 seperate screens but I decided to put 2-3 names on one screen.  That still ended up being 7 screens total, one screen for the front image and six screens for the names on the back.

I exposed 2-3 names per aluminum screen.  Here is one of six. Yikes.

Printing the names on the back was not fun.  I had to put tape over one or two of the names, leaving one name exposed so I could print it.  I then covered up the first name, took the tape off the second name and screen printed that one.  I had to do this process 15 times.  Not fun at all.

On the screens with two names I only had to adjust the shirt in order to get the name in the right spot.  The screens with three names was a bit more tricky.  I have a 16 x 16 platen and I could not adjust it enough to line up the third name.  You can only push the platen back so far before you run out of room.  My solution was to make a smaller platen that I could push  back enough to fit the name in the proper place. I made a platen that is 16 inches wide and 8 1/2  inches long.  That gives me an extra 7 1/2  inches of space to work with.  Now I can easily push the platen back and screen print an image that may be exposed in the middle of my screen.  It is quit a niffty little gadget.  I am so smart sometimes, I amaze myself.  :)  Hey, it is healthy to toot your own horn. :)




I made a smaller platen so I could adjust it to capture images in the middle of my screens.  It works great!

The smaller platen gives me an extra 7 1/2 inches to slide it backwards. 
This allowed me to print the image in the middle of my screen. :) 

Here is the finished product.

It turned out so cool.  I love it.  :)

Jeanette