How to Center a Shirt for Silk Screening

Some shirts that you will buy come with a center crease and many people use that center line to line up the shirt. I do too, but being a careful, ok, perhaps paranoid type I don’t trust that crease. I know that the crease can be off center or the shirt can be sewn crooked and it’s best to double check your placement so that you try your best to avoid a misprinted shirt. Also, not all shirts come with that center crease. Most of the recycled and higher quality shirts we buy don’t have one. A lot of the shirts we buy that don't have a center crease have side seams, however.

So, here’s how I line up a shirt on the platen.

I draw a carefully measured center line down the center of the platen. This is always good to have as a visual measure.

We will decide where to place the design on the shirt and figure out where the design on the screen will fall on the platen and I put a piece of masking tape on the platen and draw a mark about where the collar should fall to make the design print correctly on the shirt.

I open up a shirt from the bottom and slide it onto the platen all the way to the shoulder seams, making sure the shoulder seams are even on the platen edge.

I pull the shirt back carefully, keeping it straight until the collar hits the mark.

Then I use my thumbs to measure the distance from the edge of the platen to the arm hole seams and check to make sure they are the same distance on each side.

Then I slide my hands under the platen until my fingers are touching the side seams (if the shirt has side seams) and measure if the distance is even. If my fingers are touching the side seams and the platen is falling at the same place on each hand, the shirt should be pretty centered.

When the shirt has no side seams and no center crease, it’s a little harder. For the smaller sizes I use the same method as above and just look at the arm hole seams to see that the shirt is centered. For the larger sizes I fold the shirt in half lengthways and create a center line that looks right to me.

I pick up the shirt by the center line and get Freddy to help me slide it onto the platen and I place the center that I have pinched onto the center line drawn on the platen.

That’s how I place the shirts. Other people have other methods and you should check out everything you can and decide what works for you. Let me know if you find a better way. I'm always hoping to learn something new!

Next: Top Ten Worst Screen Printing Mistakes

The stuff we use, a master list.

More links than you can shake a mouse at.

Our best sources for silk screen supplies. We buy almost everything online.

Dharma Trading.com
DIY Heaven for Textile Artists (with very helpful staff).

Victory Factory
Great source for silk screens and basic supplies.

Silk Screening Supplies.com
Great source for all kinds of silk screen supplies.

Pocono Screen Supply
Another great source for silk screen supplies.


Our best sources for materials to screen print on

Shirts

Jiffyshirts.com
Good prices, volume discounts, no minimum quantity and they sell to anyone.

Blank Apparel
Good prices and no minimum quantity as well.

Alpha Shirt Company
Great for larger quantities and very nice to work with.

Paper

French Paper
Very high quality cards and poster printing stock.

Limited Papers
This place sells in smaller quantities than a printer or paper supplier. They will cut stock to size for a minimal fee. We print our posters on Cougar Opaque White 100# cover stock.


Our best source for outsourcing

Diesel Fuel
The king of screen printing, IMHO (they have done posters and stickers for me).


Inks we use

Union Ink Aerotex Water Based Textile Inks
Non-opaque water based inks that look great and stand the test of time on lighter color fabrics.

Matsui Discharge Inks (Ryonet’s brand is Matsui)
These inks need to be mixed with color pigments to make colors. More about that later.

Discharge Paste Color Remover
So great and easy to use! See my previous blog post.

Enviroline Opaque White Water Based Ink
Prints opaque white on black or dark colors.


Equipment we can recommend

Aluminum frame silk screens
Do yourself a favor and get aluminum instead of wood.

Victory Factory Spray Hose
This has worked for us instead of a pressure washer

Epson WorkForce 1100 Color Inkjet Wide Format Printer
A large format, low price inkjet printer we currently use to print transparency film.

Victory Factory Inkjet film
Works great with the dual cure emulsion we use.

Ulano LX-660 Dual Cure Emulsion
Dual Cure Emulsion, Many are good, but this is what we use.

AWT "Pro Angle" Scoop Coater
MUCH better than Magi-cote, SPS, Atlas, all the ones with plastic ends.

Aluminum UV Screen Exposure Unit
A good basic UV light unit.

4 Color, 2 Station Press
For the very low price, we have been satisfied, though if you can afford a better one, buy a better one. We bought the one without micro registration, but micro registration is a big plus. Ours doesn't have that but it's the lowest cost 4 color press I've seen. We ordered extra brackets and have made several custom platens for it.

The “Flying Wing” Ergonomic Squeegee
A very nice squeegee, though regular wood squeegees are fine too.

Test Print Squares
We go through a lot of these. Better to test on these than ruin a shirt or bag.

Mist
Sticky spray to make the t-shirt stay in place on the platen. Not to be confused with the old computer game I used to be obsessed with.

Ranar Forced Air Flash Dryer DA-1616/110
Took us a while to save up for it, but we are so glad we have this instead of the heat guns we were using. So far it is working great!

Raytec "MiniTemp" Thermometer
Very helpful to know if you have cured a print enough. I check almost every print with it.

Envirostrip Screen Reclaimer/Emulsion Remover
Works better than the toxic stuff.


Education

DVD's

Water Based & Discharge Screen Printing DVD

Specialty Printing DVD (Distressed, Retro, All over, Blends, Artwork & Tags)

A great book to get

Screen Printing Today
or Screen Printing Today
Sold all over the place.


Test Marketing - My test marketing web sites for my designs

Café Press
Zazzle


Sell the stuff you make in an online store.

Etsy.com


Our best web sources of information

Gigposters.com
A site for poster artists and screen printers. Very good information in the forums.

T-Shirtforums.com
A message board where you can ask questions and get help or read lots of info.

Screen Web
A screen printing magazine.

T-Shirt Magazine
A screen printing magazine.

Discharge Inks Ignite Hot Sales (an article)


Our wish list (wistful sigh)
Santa, please take note and remember... you have no proof!

A washout booth
Now that we finally have a place to install one!

Riley Hopkins 4 color 4 station Manual Press
With the aforementioned micro registration.


A thing that sounds pretty good.
I might have tried this if we didn’t have a starter exposure unit. Check it out.

SILKSCREEN POWER: How To Build a Portable Silkscreen Exposure Unit


That's all folks! If I think of anything I missed, I'll add it.

Next: Building Your Own Vacuum Table Poster Press

Context, an Introduction

We are a do-it-yourself screen printing company, Deaths Head Designs. There are two of us, JayJay and Freddy. JayJay does the writing and draws the designs and Freddy does the screen printing and poses for the photos. Division of labor. But they overlap. Freddy kibitzes on the creative and JayJay helps with the production. And takes the photos.

We started doing this in 2007 in Freddy's basement, but that story is told elsewhere. You can read about it on the Deaths Head Designs blog. I would even encourage you to, here:
The Hard Way
And here:
Our New Studio

We've had so much trouble. Good lord, this has been ridiculously hard in so many ways. The combination of our low budget, work space problems, time constraints and nightmares with the most basic materials has been almost crushing. I remember back in 2007 when I was posting on my favorite informative artists' and screen printers' forum, gigposters.com, about our decision to start up a screen printing business, one of the oldest members and most expert screen printers said "Welcome to Hell." Yep. Man knew whereof he spoke. But I wouldn't give it up for the world! Even after all we've been through I'm still glad we do this. Maybe you will be too if you try it.

I'll try to explain the stuff we've learned in the hope that it might make things easier for you, if you are crazy enough to want to try screen printing. We do things our own way and that might not be the way most screen printers do things, but I like to think we do a few things right.