I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Barrel Maker Printing. They have an office in downtown Chicago, but the main facility is in the Western burbs of Chicago. The owners are Justin and Erin Moore who started the shop in 2009. Justin gets my vote for funniest person in screenprinting, in the deadpan division. Erin…
I”m on many screenprinter groups on social media, etc. I still see many printers spouting a wealth of misleading information. Today we discuss the test, next post will be on some direction on finding solutions. Before you can get an answer to a problem, it is always best to define the problem. With dye migration,…
We printed Patriots victory shirts on Sunday night. Yes again. We might be the shop with the most practice at this hot market printing in the country, printing over 30 conference or world championships between the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins. You can even throw in a couple of UConn, Eagles and Yankees victories…
There is an appalling report by Human Rights Watch, released on 1/23/19, called “Unfair and Abusive Labor Practices in Pakistan.” There are approximately 15 million garment workers in Pakistan and many are working in abysmal conditions with no real protections. The piece makes truly sobering reading. You can also watch a brief video released along…
There are so many crazy fabrics out there, and we are all trying to decorate them. Transfers are a great option, but even applying transfers can cause scorching. At my shop we recently even had a low temp version causing scorching on some relatively expensive 1/4 zips. For both stopping scorching (who cares if the…
The Ink Kitchen created a Shop Talk area at 2019 ISS Long Beach. A highlight was to have professionals working in the field come in and share their vision and their expertise. Many of them had never spoken in public before, so this was fresh and fun and down to earth. We’ll be sharing more…
Shop Talk. These are all free talks. These are all happening at the Ink Kitchen Hangout Area. These are not the usual suspects, these are folks doing the work every day, not professional speakers. Booth 3521. Hope to see y’all there. See and hear amazing things. Bring questions. Speaker Session Date Time FRIDAY KC…
Ink Kitchen has a Youtube channel with a bunch of interviews. There is a three part interview we did with Dov Charney (CEO of Los Angeles Apparel and founder of American Apparel). You can watch the first part here: The man can talk and he covers a whole lot of ground in a relatively short…
At this point it is such a cliche to make New Year’s Resolution, and so many people have the experience of making them and not keeping them that it can seem futile. However, setting goals, making timelines for those goals, and periodically reviewing those goals is always a good idea and a New Year is…
I just joined yet another screenprinter’s group on Facebook. The groups are good ways to share knowledge with your peers. They also are a good place to share complaints with each other, since our families, friends and co-workers long ago stopped wanting to hear about such things. This group had an interesting initiation, to keep…
