Embroidery Designs at Urban Threads

Stencil Printed Hoodie

I’ve always loved the idea of screen printing, but the reality of it is it’s usually expensive, time consuming, and hard to do yourself without a studio. I did some screen printing in college, but without the whole “screen” part, the printing becomes a bit difficult. I don’t have the money to purchase screens or all the equipment needed, which is a shame, because it’s a really neat way of customizing your stuff.

As it happens, there IS a cheaper way of doing it, and in the true Do-It-Yourself (DIY) homemade spirit of things, it can be done with something you probably have at home: freezer paper. With an Exacto blade, an iron, some fabric paint and your freezer paper, you can have your own little homemade screen printing factory!

For this project you’ll need something to screen print on, like a shirt or sweater, some fabric paint, freezer paper, a paintbrush, and your favorite Urban Threads design.

I’ve been getting chilly lately, so I picked up a nice warm hoodie. Thing is, it’s a nice warm, boring hoodie, who’s main distinction is being very blue, and not much else. It needed some livening up. Keep in mind when choosing your item in question, that very thin fabrics don’t work as well with this because the fabric paint will inevitably stiffen it up just a bit. Still, you can find some fabric paints that work better for thin fabrics. I found mine at Michael’s.

When choosing your design, keep a few things in mind. You'll want a hi-res, 300 dpi file to get a clear stencil. One or two color designs work best, because they can be simplified down to a single design that’s easy to trace out. Sometimes just using the silhouette of a design works well too. Here’s a few examples of how you can modify designs...

I found the Seven Seas design to be a good candidate, because it is already formatted in a “stencil” style, with many of the shapes separated from one another, which will work well when we cut it out.

Once you’ve selected your design, print it out nice and dark at the size you want it to be on your shirt or hoodie.

Cut off a piece of freezer paper that’s much larger than your printed design, and turn it so the shiny wax side is facing up.

Place your printed design right side down onto the middle of the shiny side of the freezer paper, and tape it in place, like shown. Make sure there’s lots of extra room around your design, so that when you transfer it later it covers up the parts you don’t want sprayed with paint.

Turn your freezer paper over. You should be able to see your design through the paper from the other side. If you want, you can trace over your design, but as long as it shows up dark enough, you should just be able to cut it out as is.

Begin cutting out your design with the Exacto knife. It can be as intricate as your knife can manage. Use a sharp knife and take your time. Aside from being careful and not cutting through the thinner sections of your design, the main thing to watch out for is places in your design that will require you to keep track of “floating” pieces. I’ll show you what I mean...

This is an example of a “floating” piece, a part of the white space you’ll need to keep for later in order to finish the shape.

I need to keep the inside of this curl so I can stick it back in place once we’re ironing our design. Take pieces like this and put them in a bowl or envelope as you’re working. DON’T just put them on the table next to you. You will lose them.

Large pieces like this, where it’s obvious where they go, don’t need any other attention. But what about really complicated negative shapes?

For areas that have lots of small, complicated little floating pieces, like the mast rigging, it helps to number them before you cut them out. That way you know exactly how to place them once you put everything back together again. Keep them safely tucked away with your other pieces.

This is my ship, with the printout still behind it, all cut out. Once it’s done, carefully un-tape the printout from behind it, and set the stencil safely aside.

If you want to add a few details behind your design, you’ll want to do them first.

I thought some stripes would be neat, because they reminded me of old sailor shirts, and it would be a neat background for my ship to sail on. For simple things like stripes, masking tape works great. I taped down a few layers, then sprayed it first with a darker blue, so the stripes would stand out from the hoodie.

After spraying, dab any excess paint that remains on the tape with a paper towel, so it doesn’t leak or drip on anything. After that I added a light coating of the lighter blue. I like “spray” fabric paints, as opposed to brush on paints, because they let you do gradient effects like this.

After dabbing any excess paint from the surface of the tape, carefully peel it away, and you can see the neat stripes you made. Let this dry before you move on to the next step.

Once your paint is dry, it’s time to apply your main graphic. Leave your “floating” pieces behind for now.

Carefully place the freezer paper stencil on top of your hoodie or shirt, wax side down. Once you’re happy with your placement, take a hot iron and press it directly on top of your design. Don’t move it back and forth, like you would if you were really ironing something, just “stamp” it over all areas of your design, pressing a few seconds at a time, until it’s all pressed flat.

With the wonders of freezer paper, the wax side will bond securely to your shirt, but when removed, will leave no residue.

Here’s a tip for people using thin fabrics: to stop the paint from leaking through and your fabric from moving around while you apply the paint, iron another piece of freezer paper on the inside of your shirt, so everything is stuck securely in place, and nothing leaks on to the other side.

Now, for those little extra pieces, place them wax side down in their spot, and iron them on one at a time. I started with the larger pieces and worked my way down to the smaller ones.

For the small numbered pieces, I started at the bottom, placing one or two pieces at a time, then stamping them with the iron. For perfect placement, a tweezers helps get pieces in just the right spot, especially for really tiny pieces. The numbers should help to make sure you have all the pieces in the right order, and make sure you don’t have any facing the wrong way.

Be sure you place all of your pieces wax side down, or they’ll stick to your iron when you try to secure them, and then they’re really hard to get off.

Here’s my design when it’s all ironed back together.

Make sure none of your edges are loose, so that when you apply the paint, it doesn’t slip under any edges.

Spray a generous coating of your fabric paint over your design, covering all the open spaces. I used a piece of extra paper I had around to help mask the spray from the edges. If you don’t have spray on paint, just move on to the next step...

Now take a paintbrush and dab the color into the spaces to ensure even coverage. If you have regular fabric paint, this is how you would apply it. Don’t “brush” the paint on, use dabbing motions so you don’t disturb the edges of your design. Dab at everything until it’s all evenly coated.

This is what my design looked like when I was finished applying the paint.

If you want to add any accents or other details, there are lots of fabric stencils you can buy at craft stores to add a little extra flair to your hoodie. I had a fleur de lis lying around from the last stencil project, so I added it to the hoodie for a bit of an accent. For small stencils, it’s best to just dab on the paint so you don’t go over the edges.

Once you’ve finished applying your paint, carefully remove your stencil. If you have a simple stencil, it should come off cleanly, and you can probably use it a few more times.

If you have a more complicated stencil, like this one, it will probably come off in parts. That’s ok, let it come off as it needs to. If you try to pull off all of it at once, you might accidentally smear paint on your nice crisp design. Only pull off as much as you can control.

For your small “floating pieces, use your knife to carefully pry them off, making sure the extra paint doesn’t touch the design.

The finished result! It’s still a bit shiny from being wet. Let it dry fully, and follow your fabric paint’s instructions for how to wash it. Also, some fabric paint is “heat set”, so once your fabric is dry, you stamp it with the iron again to set it permanently. Check your fabric label to make sure.

After it was dry, I decided I wanted a few more stripes, so I taped down a few more lines and sprayed on top of it again. You can add details after the fact as long as it’s in the same color as your design, and will blend in if you spray over it.

Here’s the finished hoodie! Now instead of being boring blue I can sail the high seas in fashion. This technique is so close to real screen printing that no one will be able to tell the difference, and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper and much less complicated.

Now you can create professional graphic tees and hoodies all on your own! There are oodles of designs to choose from in the clipart section if you don’t feel like drawing your own, and it’s a fast and simple way of customizing up your wares. Just a little cutting and some freezer paper and you’re set! Use it on everything from shirts to bags to bibs, and create all sorts of designer swag for your wardrobe. Now I just need to stop myself from doing this to ALL my hoodies. After all, I have to make sure I leave SOME freezer paper for the holiday leftovers...