Screen-printing tricks

There are several different ways to get your designs on to a T-shirt. One of the simplest is to use an inkjet printer and a special transfer process, but there's something a bit sexier about a screen-printed shirt. Because of the expense of producing the screens, it's not economically viable to use screen-printing to make one-off T-shirts, unless your granny died leaving you a fortune or you have more money than sense.

So for the rest of us, here's a cheap, simple method of producing single T-shirts (or even a small run) with nothing more than a plain T-shirt, PVA glue, brushes, fine curtain netting or an old pair of tights, fabric paint, scissors and an embroidery hoop.

As you'll be doing most of this by hand, it's best to keep the design simple and only try complex designs when you're more confident. It's a perfect job for the weekend because the glue and paint will take a couple of days to dry. But once you have a design, it'll only take an hour or two to complete the T-shirt. The finished result will be a charming hand-drawn look, and using the screen makes it simple to run off a few more.

Click here to download the tutorial for free