Using Hoops for Silkscreen T-Shirts

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: Okay, so one of the first things you're going to need to get are some embroidery hoops and these are really pretty inexpensive. You can get them at, you know, a fabric store, clothing store, craft store. I mean, gosh, even probably at your local super department store, I won't name any names, but you know, they're pretty widely available; a couple of bucks. The thing is though is you don't want to buy just any old embroidery hoop and I'm going to kinda tell you what some of the pros and cons are. Well, first of all, obviously you're going to want a hoop that's large enough for the image that you're going to be doing and if you're going to be doing, you know, t-shirts, a hoop like this is a pretty good size. I mean this is, I don't know this is maybe a 13 inch hoop, I don't know, 13-14 inch. You get much smaller than this and there's a couple of problems. One is you'll be limited in the size of image you can do but the other has to do with the squeegee. And we're going to talk about the squeegee later, but a squeegee is a tool you use to force the ink or the paint through the screen that you're going to make. And you want to make sure that your hoop is bigger around than your squeegee and that you have a fair amount of--kind of play we can do with the squeegee throughout it, okay? So if I had a hoop much smaller than this for this squeegee, they it won't really work well together, okay? So that's one consideration, is size; big enough for your image and big enough for your squeegee. The second thing is also you kinda want your hoop to be pretty heavy duty. So, here's two kinds of hoops, this is kind of a thick one and it has kind of you know, a screw through it and I guess a wingnut here that kinda keeps it together. This is a pretty nice heavy duty hoop. There are other ones you can get but they're a little bit limpier and you might be able to make them work. You know, this is a lot thinner; it just kinda has this one sort of screw thing here to kinda keep it together. I prefer more robust kind of heavy duty hoop because you do need to stretch that fabric tight especially if you're going to be making several copies of it, so those are kind of the considerations: size, strength, and durability and--but you know, I mean, even like a really nice hoop like this, you're only going to spend a couple of bucks for it and that's definitely a lot cheaper than buying a full on screen for a traditional screen printing."