Hey everybody,
I’m trying to get training on tshirt screen printing. Who should I reach out to?
Thanks in advance,
Mike
I believe at the last print making committee meeting it was stated that there wouldn’t be any new printing classes until at least after October.
Someone else can come in and clarify that…
Are the machines down or its it just that there is only one teacher and theyre busy/can’t teach for whatever reason? I wonder if there is a way to do online training stuff for those who want it.
There are no “machines down”.
It’s a teacher issue…
Astrud (@Print_Witch ) is the main teacher for screen printing, with me assisting.
Screen printing requires more than just watching online videos and/or text instructions due to how much your success depends upon learning the tactile and audio cues of actually doing the process, so in person instructions are best.
There are 2 main sticking points for us teaching right now. 1) The Delta variant. We’re being cautious and waiting until we get our boosters before resuming in person group teaching. 2) We do craft shows, and our heavy show season starts with shows every weekend from the end of September through mid November. We simply don’t have the extra time to teach until the shows are done.
We expect to start having classes available from us in late November.
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Ah got it. So the issue is also that no one else is signed off to teach? I imagine the OP would also be needing the actual screenmaking class too.
Are there any other options? It seems kind of extreme to go so many months without any sort of on boarding class for machines that nearly impossible to break or hurt yourself on.
When I joined my guide made it sound like screen printing was a simple matter and wasn’t even sure if there was a class.
For screen printing no idea. If you mean just making shirt, dye sub or heat transfer vinyl is an option depending on shirt and how many colors. I have no idea who else is trained on the equipment (I’m not myself that’s why I am keeping tabs on this thread, never really had a design I wanted more than a couple shirts of before) that might be able to one on one for you. I’m not part of the committee so I don’t know what their rules on on one on ones.
Remind me to look up your tour guide and smack them… Gently, because they are doing us a service, but they need a good dope-slap all the same.
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Thanks @ladysandry. The shirt I’m trying to make now is extremely simple. I’m planning to make a bunch of them and use them to raise awareness about the dangers of a vaccine mandate.
I’m hoping to catch the football and baseball tailgates which is why waiting until late November is tough. I’m going to miss a big part of the season and congressional session.
Sublimation could be an option but seems like screen printing would be optimal considering the simplicity of the design.
@dryad2b The guide was in another committee and not a part of the print committee. He was doing a favor and his quick response is the reason I joined. I wouldn’t want to throw him under the bus.
Making tshirts was never really part of the plan so I didn’t investigate earlier.
I really enjoy DMS, but if there’s no way to get access to the screen prints before late November I’ll have to look for work spaces.
I’m having a hard time handling the reasoning. The committee chair is too busy selling at events and simultaneously afraid of teaching classes because of COVID. 
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Paul and Astrud are a very big part of printmaking, but neither one of them is the committee chair. Here on Talk, our official roles are in our titles. Like mine…
Ah understood @dryad2b. Thank you for the clarification.
I’d be more than happy to learn the screen printing process and teach classes. I don’t have much experience, but for people that just need some basic training to get started it would suffice.
You aren’t entitled to anyone’s time and a pandemic is a good enough reason not to want to teach classes right now, whether or not you believe in it. Not that you are owed an explanation for how people choose to spend their time. This is coming across as very entitled and I don’t see this approach working well for you so it might be better to look for other work spaces.
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@Julie-Harris I didn’t say I was entitled to anybody’s time, however your response is well taken. I’ll look for a more supportive community elsewhere. You may deactivate my fob.
I offered to learn the process and teach it to others because there are members interested in a class and the instructor has other concerns and priorities. I mean it’s painting tshirts… Not exactly rocket science.
It’s not fair to the members to lock down an entire department for months and refuse help when you have volunteers willing to step up and assist.
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For anyone else that might be following along, as someone who works as a screen printer in a shop, it makes sense that busy schedules prevent volunteers for teaching. I haven’t gotten involved in the printmaking area at DMS yet, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. It may not be rocket science, but screen print is a bit more than “painting on a shirt”. It’s a process that has several steps. I would assume screen print demos are either multiple classes or an entire Saturday. And it’s not difficult, but in a shared space, it’s very easy to miss a few details that can really mess up or ruin things for other people.
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You are correct. It is a long class and that’s only for the 1 color prints. You learn how to make your own screens and how to keep the print area clean since it can cause lots of problems if members don’t clean up after themselves. It’s not as easy or quick to teach this class and the reason they aren’t teaching until at least November is because there’s no time on weekends when you’re at a show the entire day.
I don’t understand why people don’t get that just because something looks easy doesn’t mean it is or that the training is quick & easy. 
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I’ve been a member of DMS for quite and I totally understand why we have training required on equipment. I want to take one good example you would think it’s sewing machines I need these are the type of sewing machine you might have in your home or your mom might have. We could not keep them running because people would abuse them like with work about 2 months and then I would have to go back in the 450 or more dollars worth of repairs. That’s a sewing machine a simple ordinary Home sewing machine we ended up replacing the machines with cheaper ones that disposable. The handle the problem of everybody thinking they knew how to use a sewing machine that’s why we asked for people to be checked off on sewing machines. That’s a lot of things here that aren’t rocket science. I said my head up why would anybody took the carburetor and put it in the Ultrasonic Cleaner in jewelry to clean and then leave it there yep we found it we found a carburetor in our ultrasonic cleaner. DMS is a wonderful twice and we have a lot of wonderful volunteers duct taped glasses but we can’t be everywhere and volunteers also have lives outside whether it’s their own business that takes family issues before I do covid. I applaud our volunteers. But we have a lot of expensive tools that are easy to mess up don’t forget the sewing
For the design above, I would choose heat transfer vinyl.
There are two vinyl cutter classes this week, but they’re already full from what I see.
You would also need a brief introduction to the heat press. It’s not very involved but you do need to know a few things…
Or, as I learned recently, for a design as simple as this you could make a screen from cut vinyl and then screen print your shirts. You would still need to learn some things about plastisol ink, the heater, taping the sides of the screen, running the ink through the screen onto the shirt, etc… And you absolutely need to be instructed on cleaning up the print area…