My first Yudu project: Shirts for Camille

If you are at all interested in screen printing, and you have not yet checked out the Yudu, it is definitely worth a google. (Or a Bing. Or maybe not...) The Yudu is a compact device that simplifies the process of printing with silk screens. (It's similar to the Japanese Gocco, which was recently discontinued, if you are familiar with that.)

I had my first big chance to Yudu some t-shirts this week. (I do not own one, but they have a bunch at the Urban Craft Center where I recently got a membership.) It started with an email from my friend Camille Cortinas. I had done some work for her band in the past, and she told me she had just been invited to perform solo on a tour of the East Coast. She wanted to sell t-shirts to promote her new ventures as a solo musician, but the tour was leaving in two weeks. It was a tight timeline, but we got it done!

The first step was, of course, to come up with a design. I went through several ideas before landing on this one:

We decided to do three styles – a women's crew, a tank top, and a men's crew – and I wanted to vary the colors and image placement on each. Here's how they turned out:

I would share detail images and pics of the process, but I didn't snap any... I was too busy trying print fifty shirts in two days to make the shipping deadline! The process of Yuduing is well documented in this video as well as in the videos on the Yudu site, so I wouldn't be adding much to that conversation anyway. But, as someone with a background in both traditional screen printing and Gocco, I do think I can contribute some useful tips by way of comparing the three techniques. I will soon do a full post dedicated to this subject, so stay tuned!