Screen printing for Date's coat symbol pt.5

Yesterday I finally printed the symbol on the back of Date's coat in school. I won't go into details how the printing process works because I already explained that in part 4. I'll mostly just post photos this time and explain some things I didn't (have to) do when test printing.

Preparations..

Before printing I remember those little.. well, faults on the print frame which I didn't bother with while test printing but I wouldn't want them on the real deal. I first thought about handpainting carefully with a pencil over the frame and avoid the "leak points" but that would be more tedious than needed.. so the teacher said I could just cut super small tape strips and put them over to cover those "frame leaks".

Like this!

Next thing to do was to put the frame exactly where I wanted it. This took quite some time to get right because I kept getting confused where exactly the center point was.. and it didn't help that the symbol on the print frame itself was off-centered and I didn't notice that until later. Derp. Oh well, after measuring the distances all over the place with the measurement tape I was.. sort of.. confident it was in the center.

Center pleaseeeeeeeee

Then I just took some paint and the squeegee and.. ta-dah!

Sure I had my doubts the paint wouldn't stick because of this fabric's weird plastic-y surface and whatnot.. but it went okay. On the other half of the symbol's edges it looks like either the frame moved a tiny bit during the printing or that the fabric's surface doesn't take paint so well and it "flowed out" a little. I don't know how to explain that. xD But it looks fine unless you're looking at it from an ALMOSTINYOURFACE distance.

Next thing to do? You guessed it, make it dry quicker. Hair dryer to the rescue!

Drying drying..

Then I just took it home and today (Tuesday) I ironed it to set the symbol. Knowing that this fabric rolls up when heated I decided to put weights at both sides.. namely my Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable in their protective cases. lol

The last mission - setting the print.

With that the symbol is ready and I can get on with sewing the coat together, booyah! That sure will be interesting! But before that.. Närcon Vinter is coming up this weekend and I need to prepare for departure on Thursday. AAAWWWW YEEEEAAAA excitement!