For use as an example for this tutorial, I'm going to be printing a shirt the words "Joe Is Awesome". Its a little inside joke thing for a few of my friends. Anyway, the design itself is just the phrase "JOE IS AWESOME" capitalized and centered in the font "Arial", adding the nessicary bridges in the two o's and one a. Here's the design:
I printed out that design to fit as close as I could to an standard letter size(8.5x11) sheet of paper. Once you have the design printed (see previous tutorial), you have to trace it onto some Freezer Paper. I use Reynolds Plastic-Coated Freezer Paper; Its about 3 dollars for a roll of 25 ft. They also have 50 and 75 feet rolls. Tear off a few extra inchese more than you actually need. Freezer Paper has two sides, a paper size and a plastic coated side. The plastic-coated side is the side thats going to be facing down on the t-shirt when you mold the paper to the shirt. Take the design you printed out, printed side up and lay the plastic side of the freezer paper over it, so that the paper side of the paper is facing up. Trace the design you have in pencil or pen, lightly on the paper side oFf the freezer paper:
(You can also take the non-printed side of the design you printed and use a gluestick or rubber cement and glue it to the paper side of the Freezer Paper and later cut through both, but in my experiences, it doesnt really work so well. When you heat the paper up with an iron, it doesnt fuse as well and some paint leaks out)
When you're done tracing, cut the design out with a razorblade or an x-acto knife. (I personally use a small X-Acto Knife Set that you can find at Staples. Its a thin gift set, maybe 6x2x1 inches in dimension which makes it really easy to slip into your breast pocket or messenger bag) Be careful when you cut so you dont cut outside your designated area, or even cut yourself. Take your time, and take it easy. Freezer Paper is very easy to cut through, especially with a sharp blade.
Lay the cut freezer paper on the shirt where you want it to go. The general rule when it comes to positioning a design on a shirt goes as follows: if you take the four fingers of your hand (all but the thumb) and press them up against the bottom of the collar of your t-shirt, where your pinky finger ends, that's where the top of your design should go. Basically speaking, the spacing between the collar and the design should be about the height of four fingers. Most shirts (depending on where you got the shirt or how you've treated the shirt since you got it) have a crease from the collar to the bottom of the shirt. This is, for the most part, a centerline for the shirt. Line the center of your design up to that line and your shirt is in good shape. Obviously if you want your design to go in a special place or whatever, then you dont need these rules, but they are always good to know for future reference.
Take your iron out, plug it in, and turn it on. I generally set my iron to a higher setting like cotton or polyester, since most shirts nowadays are a 50/50 poly/cotton blend. It seems to work for me, just watch the iron, you dont want to melt the plastic on the other side of the shirt for using it to long. Generally I believe 30 seconds of ironing the design on does the trick.
(blurry shot, i know)Once you're done with ironing your cut-out Freezer Paper design onto the shirt, set the iron aside and get your paint rollers and paint ready. For this project, I'm using regular cheap acrylic paint and a foam-roller trim kit. The acrylic paint I got from a craft store. You can generally get bottles in 4oz and higher portions for under a dollar a bottle. Some t-shirt printing tutorials suggest you mix your acrylic paint with fabric or textile medium (which can generally be found in the same section of the craft store you get the acrylic paint from), but in my personal experience, the overall print was the same. You can try it, but I just found it to be a waste of time. As for a paint-roller kit, I use a DecoEase Trim Kit that I got from a Loew's Hardware store. Theyre small 3in white-foam rollers that you can also get 3-pack replacement packs for. The Trim Kit comes with a roller and a paint tray, and it was only like 3 bucks. Anyway, if you're going to be using paint rollers, your best bet is to use a small foam roller, as opposed to the large bulky wool rollers you use to paint your walls with.
Shake your bottle of acrylic paint thouroughly before you open it, then open and squeeze a small amount of paint into the well of your paint tray, in the center of the tray as opposed to near the edge. This way, when you roll your roller through the paint, you can get an even spread of paint. Roll your roller through the paint with a little pressure and after a few seconds, the paint will start to adhere a bit and you'll hear some light sticking noises. That means you've gotten your paint to a nice consistency and you're ready to print. If you've rolled it too much, don't worry, you've got plenty of paint left. Try and roll the paint over the design quickly and semi-forcefully so that the paint gets onto the cloth before the edges of the Freezer Paper starts to get affected by the paint and seperate from the cloth. If this happens, you lead the chance of paint leaking out of the edges of your design.
When you think you're done rolling paint over all of your design, take a closer look over the area you've printed on and see if you can see little cracks of color through the paint. I printed black paint on a green shirt so when I printed I would see little green spots that I missed with the roller or that the roller just didnt cover.
If you checked your design and you saw little spots of color where there shouldn't be, take some more ink and run a quick/light reprint over those areas. Once you're done, check the design again to see if you got it right. You can either wait for the paint to dry with the design still on the shirt or you can take the Freezer Paper off the shirt while the paint is still wet, but you have to be careful not to get wet paint on other areas of the shirt or it'll mess other areas of the shirt up. I didnt take an "After" shot of this shirt but perhaps in time I'll post a picture of the kid this shirt was a gift for, wearing that shirt. Good luck with your prints, make lots of patches and shirts for your friends and family, for your band, etc... I'll write up and post a "Printing with Screen Printing Ink" and/or "Printing light/bright colors on dark fabric" tutorials soon.