Yudu Goes Homeschool

I've blogged here a few times about my Yudu machine, a home screen printing setup where you can make all sorts of nifty handmades.  One of my friends saw it and asked if I could print some shirts for our local homeschool group, and from that conversation an art contest was created.  Then two art contests. The final winners were featured on the shirts that I printed.  It was all great fun and I learned a ton about the capabilities and limitations of my little setup.  Want to see the shirts?

Here is a shirt within the machine (the top part of the picture is the screen that comes down over the shirt below), set up to print the "Chapel Hill Homeschoolers" text onto the finished pencil and house graphics. This was by far the most difficult part of the process and I had to take a "Mama Time Out" complete with hot chocolate part way through after ruining two shirts in a row.  (Two shirts that were completely done otherwise, I might add.  AAAAHHHHHH!!!!  But it's all good now.)

Here we are with the squeeges and platen for the back of the shirts.  The platen is what actually creates the design on the shirt by only allowing ink to go through where the design has been burned.  Some of my black ink was much more viscous than the others but it all printed equally well.

They take a while to dry, so my office was perpetually covered in shirts.  Since they featured a two color design and a front and back graphic that was a lot of dry time in between each printing.

Here is the final front logo.  Since my machine has a hard time with fine lines I was able to touch up the words just a bit with fabric marker.  I didn't create the art, so I couldn't tamper with the design itself - something I most definitely would have done if it were my own work.  The Yudu is a great home machine but its major limitation is printing very fine detail.  That is why I saved this part until the end of printing, even though it meant wrecking a few otherwise perfect shirts in the process.  I needed to refine my fine detail burning and printing methodology while knowing that the rest of the process would go smoothly.

The backs of the shirts came out great.  One family said that they were planning to color in the picture with fabric markers.  What a great idea!

And here they are, all packaged and ready to go.  I used the business cards as an easy way to write delivery and ironing instructions on each order since my cardstock is hard to reach right now, being tied up for a scrapbooking class that I'm teaching. The yarn was both pretty and functional as it held the orders together and secured the family's name to their shirts.

I sure hope everyone liked them and could appreciate the hard work and unique detail that a screenprinted shirt offers.  It was fun doing some printing for people outside of my own family!

Comments

[Sara]

awesome!! Lots of work, but they will have them forever!

[Sara]

And it just went on my wishlist--somewhere between the serger and iPhone4:)