Impressions - September/October 2010 - (Page 56)

HANDS ON >> SCREEN PRINTING >> HANDS ON TECH TIPS HANDS ON >> HANDS ON For Screen Printers Only SCREEN PRINTING HANDS ON TECH TIPS HANDS ON How To Do Creative Shirt Treatments Try these simple, low-cost garment-dyeing techniques for creating shirts that stand out in a crowd. In today’s world of personalization, many customers want something that nobody else has. Our shop has discovered a couple of techniques for treating shirts — dipping and spraying — that help us create one-ofa-kind looks. These two relatively simple techniques work on practically any type of garment fabric and can produce an enormous range of styles and looks, making them appealing options for your shop to add to its lineup of decorating techniques. Here’s how they work. 1 IT’S IN THE MIX There is no exact recipe for creating the solution into which you will dip — or with which you will spray — a garment. It’s a trial-and-error process, which includes many variables, that depends on the tonal ranges you are looking for in the patterns you create. Use this formula as a starting guideline and plan on experimenting with quantities until you get the look you desire. Pour about 2.5 gallons of water into a 5-gallon bucket. In an empty 1-gallon bucket, mix 1 quart of quick-cure base. This is the binder that allows the pigment to adhere to the fabric. Next, add a couple of ounces of ZFS, which is a discharge additive, to the quickcure base. This base originally has the consistency of yogurt but after you add the ZFS, it breaks down to the consistency of water. The last step is to add the pigment to the mixture. I suggest starting with a quart of pigment, which is ready-to-use waterbased ink. Again, the amount you should add really depends on the color you are trying to achieve. If you want pink, add a small amount of pigment; if you want a deep red color, add a lot more. Plan on experimenting with different amounts and record the results. Pour this entire mixture into the 5gallon bucket. The water dilutes the pigment, but you can always add more pigment straight to the water after this step. 56 Impressions >> September/October 2010 2 1 To prepare the dipping mixture, you’ll need at least two 5-gallon buckets. One bucket will have 2.5 gallons of water and the second bucket is used to wring out extra dye. You may want to have a third 5-gallon bucket of plain water to dip the shirt in water ﬁrst, then dye. Add about 1 quart of quick-cure base to the 2.5 gallons of water. This recipe is a good starting point. Experiment with quantities to get the look you want. 2 While the ZFS will discharge existing dye from dark shirts, in this situation its main purpose is to break down the consistency of the quick-cure base into a liquid you with which you can work. Again, creating this mixture isn’t an exact science, so experiment with a few batches to see how it works before going into production. If you are treating dark-colored shirts, the ZFS removes some of the shirt’s dye and replaces it with the color of pigment you selected. However, with traditional screen printing, you normally would use ZFS with a discharge base. As a rule of thumb, you can estimate that each gallon will sufﬁce for about 20 shirts, depending on whether you are saturating the entire shirt, doing a splatter pattern or only dyeing a portion of the shirt (like across the shoulders or the hem). For example, if you’re treating 300 shirts, you should make about 20 gallons of the impressionsmag.com http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - September/October 2010

Impressions - September/October 2010
Contents
First Impressions
FYI
Product Gallery
2010 Top-Volume Decorators
Back to Basics
Inside Outerwear
Technique: Use Proper Techniques to Easily Embroider Fleece
Technique: Water-Based Ink and the Environment
Production
For Screen Printers Only
Online Directory
Tech Tips
Using Layer Styles for Digital Printing
On Design
Business to Business
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - September/October 2010