Today I screen-printed some patches. When I’ve done screen-printing before it’s been with proper facilities, not on my dad’s newspaper-covered kitchen table, with a cheap kit I got in the clearance sale, so I was a bit nervous. Preparing the screen and printing is a lot more fiddly when you don’t have a light table, spray washer or anything to rest the print on except a piece of cardboard. I thought that I’d messed up my screen when I was rinsing the emulsion after exposing it, and the water suddenly turned hot.
A small amount of emulsion did come off, but it was small enough to fix with some masking fluid. The main problem was actually when it came to printing. The fabric ink that came with the set kept drying on the screen in seconds, and I had to wash it twice to stop the prints going faint. I had a fair few rejected patches that were too light or had a faint corner. These ones are for my friend Tukru to take for a stall she’s doing on Sunday. I kept the artwork on the screen, so next week I’ll get some better quality ink (probably in a different colour, I used blue because it’s what I had) and print lots more. They will be available to buy mail order at £2+postage, along with any leftovers from Sunday.