Screen Printing Designs

[Griselda Humbarger]

Iwould like to bring this to a next level, and that's where I need help. I am looking for a method, where I can easily turn any pictures to screens with different sized holes or different density of holes. This way I could achieve different shades of the same colour within the design (by transferring different amounts of paint).

If you look at printed photos in books or magazines through a magnifying glass or microscope, you will see that they do consist of solid dots in varying sizes and angles. There are no shades in-between, only dots 100% (ON) or 0% (OFF) in the colors yellow, magenta, cyan, and black. By varying the size of the dots of each ink color, all the zillion colors shades in-between are produced.

So, practically, you would need to convert a color-image into black/white in an image editor, then adjust contrast to your wishes, and then export that greyscale image as a printing-raster or printing-screen (I am not sure about the exact terminology), to convert the grey-shades into black dots of varying sizes. In some professional printing softwares, you can also select the desired shape of the dots: square, diamond, circle, and you can select the angle under which they are printed.

I doubt if freeware like Inkscape or GIMP can do this too, because this is a typical professional printing feature, not required for home or office use. But you might find some software, I don't know.

Cam Watt is a Media, Art, and Design teacher who has provided the files to 3D print a screen printing kit, including print frames, a standoff leg, and a squeegee. The kit also includes a detailed tutorial on converting your 2D files to 3D models (STL files.) Once the kit gets printed, Watt also provides instructions on how to use it to reproduce your own design repeatedly. This is a great project: the kit can be printed on any 3D printer with a 6 x 6 " bed, and the end result is durable enough to withstand what is likely to be your enthusiastic use of it! More details on this process can be found in this article

Hello, I am looking for resources for the creation of silk-screen printing in four-color printing, and the halftones and patterns are very specific for a good result to be obtained in screen printing, if you can help me how to create a four-color screen printing, many for your attention, regards Eduardo Claros

Which Affinity are you using? Are you wanting to create the design in Affinity and export to a particular file format or are you wanting to print the design directly from Affinity? If you could provide more information we can help you further.

I enjoyed it so much that I immediately signed myself for another art class when it finished. I found it to be so relaxing and inspiring to tackle a craft different to sewing. You all know how deeply i love sewing, but it is hard sometimes working in a field that is also your hobby. It was refreshing to throw some creative energy into a craft that was different than what i usually do but still somewhat adjacent to sewing.

This was quite an intense course that ran over four weeks, and truth be told, I think it could have been a bit longer. I think we all spent a lot of time feeling quite overwhelmed because we were learning so much at such a fast pace. Having said that, I had an amazing time, so maybe the fast pace was part of it haha.

Since this course was about creating repeat prints for fabric, we spent most of our time working on how to create good repeating designs, and how to physically screenprint a repeating pattern seamlessly, which i found really nerve wracking and fun at the same time!

Angela left the kind of design you explored very much up to you, which i really enjoyed. Having a lot of freedom and course homework was wonderful because it really encouraged me to spend a lot of time fleshing out my design at home as well as in class. I came with a set idea of creating a print based around Western Australian wildflowers and I really appreciated having the freedom to do that.

Doing night classes at Freo Arts Centre was also just a really lovely experience in general. The building is gorgeous, and there are other classes running at the same time, so they set out a little tea and biscuit station for night students, and i felt like that was a really sweet touch.

I am always inspired by Australian flowers, but can never find fabric prints with Aussie flowers that i really love. So that was my goal. I used some flowers from my own garden as well as a book on Western Australian flowers that my mother in law gave me a few years ago.

Creating a motif could mean using one image and really finessing it or putting all your images together to create a design. This was the really fun part! I decided that I wanted quite a dense print, with multiple florals where all the florals overlapped each other, instead of a single design that was repeated over and over. Or individual motifs that were spread out. I feel like for garment fabric that made the most sense to me.

Angela gave us lot of examples of how to tile designs, and walked us through a lot of methods for how to seamlessly repeat patterns. Most people used a method of photocopying their designs over and over, cutting out and rearranging them then taping back together to create a repeating design. Since i work in Adobe Illustrator allllll the time creating instruction diagrams for my patterns, i was very comfortable with using that program. So I scanned my individual florals into the computer, vectorized them, and spent a lot of time rearranging them and coming up with a dense repeat in Illustrator.

Once we had our repeating design ready to go we needed to make sure all the lines were solid black, and then get the design printed on acetate (which is that see through plastic used for projectors, anyone remember projectors?!)

For those who used the method of photocopying and tracing designs over and over, this stage required going over the design with black marker to make sure everything was a solid black line. Then getting it photocopied onto acetate. Since my design was digital i just took a usb to the print shop and had them print it out.

I tried to work my design so that it would fit neatly into one A3 sheet of acetate so that it would be easily fit on my screen. Then i had two sheets printed, and overlapped them so they would fill up the screen but leave enough room at the top and bottom for ink.

This part was really cool! The way your screen is burnt is to cover the screen in photo emulsion liquid. Which honestly was the most terrifying part of the experience for me. I was shocked how hard it was to neatly and evenly apply this emulsion. I thought it would be the case of just painting on, but nope. It involved pulling a special tray over the screen at a particular rate and angle. Thank goodness Angela was at our elbow helping with this the whole way.

And after printing as many rows as we could before class ended our fabric was done! I heat set mine once i got home, by ironing it for a few minutes until all the ink was set. I really wish i had had time to heat set in class because they had a Elna press and that would have been wayyyy faster for pressing an all over design!

One of things i really appreciated was that Angela squished as much as she could into 4 short weeks. Since we had all worked hard to create our burnt designs, she also showed us another faster method for screen printing designs that is a little easier to replicate at home.

This method simply involves tracing your design on drafting paper and cutting out your design with an exacto knife. the difference with this method is that you have to be careful with how you draw your design as you need to make sure your design is always connected to the drafting paper or else pieces will fall out. It also needs to be easy to cut. Circles were hard. For this reason i think that burning a screen is better for detailed designs, where as this cutting out method is better for simplified designs.

Screen printing is honestly incredibly addictive, and now I find myself dreaming of printing more and more things. I wonder if Chris will be ok with me turning our outside dining table into a screen printing station hehehe.

Meg is the Founder and Creative Director of Megan Nielsen Patterns, and is constantly dreaming up ideas for new sewing patterns and ways to make your sewing journey more enjoyable! She gets really excited about design details and is always trying to add way too many variations to our patterns.

Honestly, me too. Before trying it myself i had no idea how much work goes into hand printed fabrics, and now I keep thinking about block printed fabrics and how labour intensive that process must be!

Gosh thanks so much Marie! That means so much to me :) And honestly i was terrified of botching it the entire way through. The teacher kept telling me to stop freaking out because i was stressing too much hahaha

Now, THIS is exciting stuff! After doing deconstructed screen printing with randomly created screens, I decided to draw on my last screen, with a syringe. This is a technique I learned in a DSP class with Kerr Grabowski.

Like Gabriele, I decided to add a background color to my efforts. I was aiming for blue-green, but I initially got mostly green. As I slowly added more blue, I pulled screen after screen, resulting in a run of blues and greens.

Our Ready-To-Use stencils can be used over and over again on different surfaces with different types of paints. Use these stencils for fabric projects, including t-shirts, sweatshirts, tote-bags, canvas, and even wood for a customized wooden sign or plaque. Ready-To-Use can also be used on non-porous surfaces with the appropriate type of ink. Can also be used on chalkboards with water based chalk paste.

Use Ready-To-Use stencils with most screen printing inks, including regular primary, metallic, and opaque inks. Even ceramic paints, under glazes, acrylic and enamel paints can be used. Be sure to use ink or paint with a pudding-like consistency to avoid bleeding. All Ready-To-Use stencils are made with Standard EZScreen stencils and have a mesh count of 110.

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