Shirt Tags
Week 10: 2nd-8th October
This week I took the final step to prep my shirts before they can be screenprinted by stamping on a ‘tag’ to each of the shirts. Using the lino-cut stamp I made last week and lino-printing tools I already had, I took to testing out the stamp on paper before using it on the shirts to make sure there the stamp was cleanly cut. Since my design is quite intricate and the stamp fairly small, I also needed to be mindful of the amount of paint I was applying to the stamp. Below is my first trial with the black ink which went well but I could definitely apply more paint to the stamp.
After a couple more practices with the stamp, I was ready to print for real onto the actual shirt. I used:
Lino roller
A glass pane to smoothly apply the paint to the roller
The textile paint that came in the secondhand screenprinting kit I purchased
A flat skinny box to place within the shirt so paint didn’t seep through to the other side
Below is the result of my first stamp print. I was pretty happy with the outcome but I was a little worried it felt a little too homemade, however I’m hoping that once the actual design is on the shirt it will elevate the stamp within the shirt.
I continued printing the remaining tags and chose the colour based on what colour I wanted the front/back design to be. I then hand-painted the size letter of the shirt underneath as per my plan back in semester one. I think some of these turned out well and then some not so much. I did think about making stamps for the letters but was worried about cutting something so fine and keeping its structural integrity across several uses. Below are all my final shirts with their ‘tags’ printed.
Overall, I think the blue and red stamps worked out just how I wanted but the white not so much. I found the white paint wasn’t as opaque as it suggested and therefore I made the decision to hand paint over the existing stamp more which I think ruined it a bit. Additionally, because all the shirts are secondhand, the quality of the material on some shirts isn’t great since they’ve had some wear and so it just didn’t take to the paint well.
I also found that the white stamps leaked through to the other side quite a bit as I added too much water to my brush when hand-painting. The other stamps all went through as well; not as much as the white, but still a bit disappointing.
If I were to do this activity again I would have made multiple stamps because I found washing/wiping the stamp several times wasn’t great on the fine details carved from the stamp and also it was really hard to wash out paint from the smaller crevices of the stamp. I also wouldn’t have hand-painted over the stamped design at all and I probably would have made some kind of stencil for the sizes rather than lino-cutting or handpainting them.
