More Ghosts of Past Projects

Remember last year, before I had Little Man I had designed a silk screen to print my kitchen curtains?  And then you never heard anything about it again?  Ummm, yeah, well I found the screen while I was cleaning the craft room and was re-inspired to finish that project up. I worked on it all day yesterday and finished all the printing.  I could never have done this a year ago with all the piles of clutter, but today it was easy with my clean dining room table (note, I did not say the craft room was clean).I learned a lot with this project
1.  Do not expect perfection, drapery sheers, embroidery hoops, and Mod Pogde work well, but this is a low cost method, there will be imperfections.  I am a bit of a perfectionist and this was really hard for me, but even with the mistakes I really like the graphic print and once they are hanging up I don’t think the imperfections will be as noticeable/bothersome.
2.  Use a large hoop, make sure there is enough room around your design to easily get your squeegee to all parts of your design.  I really should have used a bigger hoop and given myself a little more room.  It was really hard to get the very top and very bottom to print good without going over it multiple times, which make the print blurry.
3.  Don’t be stingy.  Apply several layers of Mod Podge to your design to get a nice, sharp print.  Also be generous with the printing ink, the excess can be scraped off the screen and reused.
4.  Having a clean and organized work area makes the printing process go much faster and it a lot easier.  I really could have used a clothes line, but luckily the ink dried really fast. 5.  If you have a repeating pattern alternate your motifs so that you aren’t smearing wet designs.  Use registration marks to make your designs line up and look professional.6.  If you only need a few copies of you design it might be easier to stencil it with freezer paper.I am super excited to finish these up, I got too tired to finish sewing last night and I have a lot of stuff going on today.  I’m over half way done with the sewing and I expect to finish them tonight.  I can’t wait to hang them up!!!  I'm trying to decide if I'm going to leave them plain or if I should add some giant rick rack or some pompom fringe.
Also, my scarf fail from last week is being featured on CraftFail today, so pop on over there for a few laughs.  It’s always nice to see I’m not the only one who has weird, crafty mishaps.