Home Screen Printing

I've been wanting to try my hand at screen printing for a while now and finally got inspired this weekend. We went to the mall this weekend and I found a tiny Zoey sized Ramones T-shirt. I thought it was adorable. I've been trying to think of something that I could make for one of my friends that's pregnant. This friend is way cooler than me, so I wanted to make something extra cool. Anyways, here's how I did it.

Materials:
-Old lady Nighty (or curtain sheers, tulle, old pantyhose, etc.)
-Embroidery hoop
-Paintbrushes
-Mod Podge
-Article of clothing to put image on
-Cardboard, cardstock, a clipboard or anything hard that you don't mind getting paint on
-Fabric paint (I've heard Speedball brand is the best, but they didn't have any at my craft store. I just used Tulip brand. It's ok, but I'm going to find the Speedball kind).

1. Find or draw the image you want to use. I just found mine doing a google image search. I'm sure there's a fancy way to turn a picture into clip art, but I don't know how to do that.
2. Rummage through your bag of clothes that's left over from the old lady that used to live in our house. Find a ridiculous nighty that has a very fine mesh overlay. If you don't live in a house that has a bag of old lady nighties, you can steal one from your grandma. If that's not an option, you can go to a thrift store. Other options for materials are curtain sheers, tulle or nylons. Tulle will make a grainier picture. The finer the weave on the material, the clearer your picture will be.

3. Cut your material to be a little bigger than your embroidery hoop. Stretch the material across the hoop and screw it on tight.

4. Place your hoop over your image. Trace the image onto the material. It makes it easier for the next step if you shade in the negative space areas.

5. Using Mod Podge (because it's not water soluble), paint in all of the negative space areas. In other words, paint everywhere that you don't want the ink to be. Allow Mod Podge to dry completely.

6. Place cardboard or whatever you have handy between the layers of your shirt so the paint doesn't bleed through to the other side.
7. Position your hoop so the image is where you want it to be on the shirt. Using a paintbrush, blot the fabric paint over the screen. Gently lift the hoop off of the shirt when you have covered all of the spaces. Allow paint to dry.

8. Enjoy!

9. You can now rinse your screen off for later use.