How to make your souvenir garment part 3!

This week I made my first of many prints on my favorite sweater! I ruined it a month ago and then decided to upgrade it by making a souvenir sweater out of it. In my last post I took you through some of my sketches and y’all voted for me to print a sequoia. Sequoias are my favorite trees in the whole world and we spent a lot of time close to them in California last summer. Camping under them, making music next to them, hiking through (really!) them… they are so tall and wide and amazing. Just to think they have been there for over 2000 (!!!!) years is humbling. Majestic beings who have lived through it all!

I lived a year in California as a 4 year old and I even (accidentally) found the exact tree of one of my favorite pictures of my childhood. It is this huge fallen tree, my brothers are climbing in its roots and I am in my fathers arms. The fallen tree is still there, 40 years later, no root climbing allowed anymore but my heart started to sing when I realized it was that very same tree.

So as you can understand, I needed a sequoia on my souvenir sweater and y’all voted for it as well! I figured I needed this print on my sleeve and as I always want to try out different techniques, I wanted to see if I could make a big print with a small screen. Gotta have a challenge!

I started drawing the sequoia directly on two stencil papers I taped together. And made it into a 2 color print. The outline in dark blue and the leaves in mint. Love this color combo with the base color of the sweater (I used my amazing A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Sanso Wada book). I cut the stencils by hand.

Let me take you through the full process in 19 steps:

1. Made my design directly on the stencil paper, two taped together.

2. Traced the second layer - the leaves - on another stencil paper.

3. Cut both stencils.

4. Made a bounce layer I could slide into the sleeve.

Ok. So far, pretty much the steps I always do. But this time I also wanted to try something new though. I wanted to see if I could print a big print with a tiny screen. Why you might ask. Well for fun, and the challenge aaaand I like to travel ánd I like to screen print so if I can do this it would mean I can bring a tiny screen and print everything I want! Worth the try!

5. Instead of taping the first (trunk and branches - dark blue) stencil to my screen I now taped the stencil to the table so it wouldn’t move.

6. Applied the ink and printed the first part.

7. Moved the screen and printed the second part, this is where it slightly went ‘wrong’. Part of the stencil was still stuck to my screen and I didn’t see that so I printed on and made a cool shadow shape by accident!

8. Cursed a bit, realized it kinda looked cool, moved the screen up and printed the last part.

9. Cleaned my screen right away (obv, because noooobody wants a clogged screen).

10. Took away the stencil carefully.

11. Reassured myself it really did look cool and did a Bob Ross impersonation saying out loud: happy little accidents! to myself.

12. Cleaned the stencil.

13. Made myself a cup of coffee, enjoyed that in the sun. (You have to take time for the first layer to dry you know, could have used a hairdryer to speed it up but didn’t.)

14. Placed the second stencil (leaves - mint green) in position and taped the stencil to the table.

15. Printed the mint green leaves moving my screen once.

16. The last print was a little vague so placed the screen again and printed again.

17. Cleaned the screen.

18. Took away the stencil to clean and cheered out loud! Loooved how it turned out on the sleeve!

19. Realized I was late for an appointment about our guide and pretty much ran out of the door feeling very happy (and in a hurry obv).

    So I learned that you can print a big print with a tiny screen, which is very cool if you ask me! Also that if you do it the way I did it, you do need to put more pressure on your squeegee to make sure the ink goes through the screen.

    So can’t wait to make my next print for my souvenir sweater! Let me know if there is any specific technique you want me to show you.

    Xo Bobbinhood

    aka Barbara and Dani

    ps: The ultimate easy screen print guide where we tell you how and where to get all your supplies (since we closed our webshop) and way more is coming out sooooon! We are beyond excited as we are making an actual hardcopy in pre-order!!!