8th Grade Party t-shirt

A t-shirt design plus three color options.  Creating the annual 8th grade party/class shirt design was done using black, white and bright royal screen printing ink.  A-Team apparel out of Prairie City, IA were contracted to print and fine tune the design.  The finished product was a huge hit.  Thanks A-Team Apparel for sponsoring the Pella Grade Party this year!

T-shirt Design

One of my favorite things to do is to use my design background when creating t-shirt designs for groups and organizations.  This is favorite created for our children's USA Swimming club.  

T-shirt design

Creating t-shirt designs for local clubs and organizations gives me a chance to use my art and design background as well apply my knowledge of apparel and textiles and design. 

T-shirt Design

It's that time again to create the Annual 8th Grade Party t-shirt. Wordle was used as the inspiration to create this t-shirt design.  It became alive with all 180+ students names.  Note: Wordle only allows you to use up to approximately 80-100 words.  Additional words and names were placed using post it glue while cutting and pasting.  A-Team Apparel out of Prairie City, IA polished up the layout, created the vector art, screen printed the shirts and sponsored the annual party.  A big thanks goes out to them for all their hard work in creating such a fun shirt and for generously sponsoring the 8th Grade Party!

Greater Iowa Swim League State T-shirts

This year Pella Swim Team will be hosting the Greater Iowa Swim League State Swim meet with Grinnell.  Creating a design for the event was on the agenda.  Wordle was recently discovered.  Using Wordle has proven to be a super fun, creative way to use words with color.  The design below was used using the Wordle.Net website. 

The shirts were printed by Graphx2atee owned by Sportspage.

Pella Swim Club - Team Logo

Pella Swim Club received their USA Swimming Charter in March of 2011.  This fall a logo for the club was created.  Below is the final rendition.  It will be used on all official club documents including but not limited to caps and shirts as much as possible.  

2 color logo on red caps

2 color logo on white

Single color logo on white

State Fair T-shirts

The t-shirts are complete and the kids look great.  I screen printed the shirts to reflect each one of the kids.  

The screens were exposed for 18 minutes under direct light and then washed clean with the garden hose.  The were not perfect, next years will be better.  With temps as high as 94 degrees expected we decided to cut out the sleeves on two of the boys shirts.  I then serged them and top-stitched them down. 

State Fair T-shirts

Every year we coordinate the cousins when attending the Iowa State Fair.  This year's shirts are turquoise.  The girls shirts are sleeveless tanks with zebra accented straps.  For the boys shirts I choose standard t-shirts. 

When creating the design I cut and pasted clip art to resemble each one of the children. 


This was my second attempt at screen-printing.  I exposed the artwork for 20 minutes under the lamp and then washed the screen with a garden hose.  The screen wasn't perfect but did give us an acceptable end result.  More pictures to come when they wear the shirts in a few weeks.

Pella Dolphin 2010 Regional State Tee Design

Our local Swim Team creates a tee-shirt to wear to the State YMCA and Midwest Regional swim meet each year. This year I had the honor of designing and coordinating the project. Using contrasting colors can help create a more interesting and easy to see design. This years t-shirts were printed on grey or purple 100%Cotton Gildan ultra tee's by a local screen printer.

When working with lots of names on a tee-shirt is is always good to have the individuals initial the spelling of their name on the actual arwork before giving final approval for screening.

Unattached USA Swimming Tee

FRONT

I did it!
Our son and a team-mate have earned a trip to the USA state swim meet this weekend. I created t-shirts for the swimmers to wear. It is tradition for all the teams to wear coordinating shirts to the big meets to show team spirit. Our local swim team is a Rec/YMCA team. Those swimmers that want to swim against tougher competition can swim unattached without a team for the USA Swimming program.

It has been 20 years since I had my semester of screen printing in college. I kept it simple. Just 2 colors, typesetting and simple clip art. I used supplies from Dick Blick. The perfect kit to get you started is made by Speedball and retails for less than $40. I was lucky and didn't have to purchase many supplies. I was able to find most of the materials I needed at our local Art Center in Pella. I originally reclaimed some old screens using liquid gel dishwasher soap with bleach.

BACK

This video was a great refresher and tutorial.

Dick Blick: How to use Speedball Screen-printing materials

I only burned my screens for 30 minutes instead of 45.
45 minutes was too long. I wasn't able to wash away the sections that were to release. The light was too warm and melted the emulsion. Remember your transparencies need to be very dark.
I used two after one wasn't opaque enough.

Now to screen print tee's for our annual trip to the Iowa State Fair.

A Grant Wood inspiration

My parents celebrated 40 year's of marriage this summer. Each year our entire family attends the Iowa State Fair together and each year we create a t-shirt for all the children to wear. This helps the adults keep track of the children. This year I designed a shirt to commemorate my parents 40th.

This past spring we took our children to the Des Moines Art Center, while there we were able to see the traveling art display by Grant Wood. The most famous painting we saw was the pieced titled American Gothic. My inspiration to create these t-shirts came from the American Gothic painting.

I sketched in my parents faces, then added some details that were unique to them. My mom collects snowman so I placed a snowman on her broach. Dad had a farming accident years ago and lost 2 fingers so I drew his hand on the pitch fork minus his two fingers. One of our favorite things to do when everyone is home visiting is to have a hot dog and marshmallow roast, on the pitch fork I drew two marshmallows and a hot dog. Dad has a special sun hat he wears during the summer so I sketched that on his head and in the background of the picture, is a drawing of the Big Yellow Slide the children love to go down at the Iowa State Fair.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! We love You!