Stretching the Screen for Silkscreening T-Shirts

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: All right. So I've got my piece of fabric. It's about the right size. I'm going to cut the corners off after I have it stretched into the embroidery hoop. So the way that the stretching of the screen works is actually, I shouldn't call it stretching. It's called stretching the screen, but you really want to be careful and not stretch the fabric. I mean, you want it to be tight. But if you stretch it, what'll happen is you'll distort it and, a little bit, and it'll become a little bit-it'll become a little bit uneven if you try and stretch it out, you know? Imagine like, I mean, just imagine just like a shirt, if you stretch it a bit then you kinda let it go, it kinda becomes a little bit distorted and uneven. So you want it to be tight in this embroidery hoop, but you don't want to actually physically stretch it too much 'cause you might get it distorted. So the way to do it is, you know, one part of the hoop down, I'm going to lay, kind of the fabric over it like this and get it kind of centered. Now, it's not tight now, it's very loose, and we're going to want it tight. So now I have to kind of put--let out some slack on the embroidery hoop. So in this particular one, I just kinda you know, swing that wingnut out a little bit. But different ones work different ways. You might have, like, a threaded screw like this or something. So I'm going to put this over the other one, right? That's how an embroidery hoop works, right? Now the inner hoop is inside the outer hoop and the fabric is between them, right? So you see what I did? Let me just do it one more time, okay? So without the fabric, right, the outer hoop fits on the inner hoop. So if I put the fabric on the inner hoop like this, kind of get it centered, if I now put this, you know, the outer hoop on, it's sandwiching the fabric between the outer hoop and the inner hoop and that's what you want, okay? So now I've kinda got it sandwiched but it's still very loose. Forget about the corners for now. I know I told you that was a problem, and it is. It's still kind of loose. So this is when, kind of gently, you know, again, you don't want to stretch it, but you just kind of start working the edges a bit to kind of start getting it not stretched, but you want it taut. You want it fairly tight and flat. And as you do this, you're also going to want to start tightening up the outer hoops. So in this case, I'm going to start--let me give this wingnut a few spins here to kinda get it tight. And I'm just going to kinda continue to go around and get this piece of fabric kind of as flat and as tight as I can without really stretching it out. Because, you know, once it gets stretched out, it basically quits being flat. So I'm going to keep doing that, keep tightening, keep stretching until it looks good. And so I'll keep doing that and we'll look at it in the next clip."