I'm the best sister....

Well, this week I am.
This is my brother's logo. In case you are confused about his business, he makes axes and knives. He said a few months ago that he looked into getting some shirts printed with the logo but he was a little shocked by the price. He has a BIG birthday coming up Saturday and I thought it would be a good idea to try to screen print some shirts for him. 
Little did I know what a huge project it was going to be!

MY SIL and niece have a Cricut machine so if I could get the logo file they agreed to cut it in vinyl for me. When I emailed him to get the logo I figured out that he would know why. Fortunately, he had food poisoning that week and wasn't alert enough to figure it out.
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For screen printing, the image has to be cut in reverse and this particular one is a total pain to weed and transfer. The tiny triangles in the "A"s and the holes of the "B" helped me practice my profanity vocabulary. I'm trying to learn Spanish and I should have looked up some Spanish profanity for this project to learn new words. I actually weeded 2 of these because I used the first one to practice.
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Transferring to the screen is no picnic either. After it's on the screen, you cover the rest of the screen in painter's tape.
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My first practice pieces were in black ink on different fabrics. I wanted to see how many prints I can do with one screen and the answer is lots. Here's where I also learned that my ink is old and needed to be thinned out pretty substantially. A close inspection of my practice pieces show that there are some coverage inconsistencies and smudges. It was clear that practicing was needed.

Then I decided to start on the shirts. I frequently dye shirts for him. Nothing fancy, he just likes some hand dyed texture in dullish colors. I got a pack of tshirts and dyed all 6 of them. I printed 3 of them and hated how they were looking so I washed out all of the ink, re-washed the shirts and started again.
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My problem with the first printing was my print surface. I was using this little ironing board and the cover was too loose and gave me an uneven surface. I got my staple gun out and stapled the cover tight and that solved my problem. I never use this as an ironing board so now I have a new print board!
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Because his business is a steel-based business, I wanted the color to be gray. Here are the finished shirts with the logo on the back.

The funny thing is that he pulled the shirts out and looked at the front of them and was commenting on the colors. Chris finally told him to check out the back. I think he loved them.
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While I was weeding the design, I took the waste piece with his initials and put that on another screen and printed this for his birthday postcard. I was so stressed getting the shirts done last weekend that I forgot to write a birthday note or sign the card! He can hang it in his shop somewhere to remind him how cool I am.

One thing that came out of this project is the recognition that I need a Cricut machine too. I might be getting into that later this summer.