Swift Collective 2011 Holiday Cards

Just before the holidays I was approached by Swift Collective, a digital experience agency, to print up their 2011 Holiday cards. We used metallic silver ink on a teal paper that they supplied. We also printed on both the cards and the envelopes. Metallics are always tricky when dealing with fine detail. Normally you'd want a 110 mesh but I ended up opting to use a finer 150 mesh to hold the fine lettering detail. Swift Collective was very pleased with the results, and I hope their clients appreciated the cards!

1971 Baseball Champs!

I was approached by Soumalay Douangmala of Antworx to get some last minute, low run, shirts off press this week and The Pull was happy to help. The shirts were designed for a client of his that wanted a special way to celebrate her dads birthday. Apparently he played high school baseball back in his day, and along with his team, they won states in 1971. So we printed up 8 shirts, with a front and back print, for each of their family members to wear to his birthday party. The front of the shirts featured a Baseball State Champions design and the back featured his name and number.

This design used a lot of halftone dots and small lines to achieve that vintage distressed look. I was a bit worried about it, since I don't use discharge printing methods and opaque white ink is really thick. Typically it requires a really open mesh to get good coverage on dark shirts but to hold the detail I'd need a tighter mesh. I ended up using a 150 mesh count screen and mixed my white ink about 50/50 with a semi transparent white and opaque white. It gave me smooth enough ink to get clean pulls and hold the finer details. I also added some extra water to the ink to keep it from clogging in the small details of the design.

I love doing custom prints for people that have good design and meaning behind them. I think these shirts fall into the "Re-Union Shirts that Don't Suck" category. The 8 shirts ran a total of $18.50 each and were printed using non-toxic water based white ink. Soumalay supplied the shirts, which were 50/50 blend poly cotton Jersey brand t-shirts.


And from what I heard from Soumalay, his client loved them! I'd love to see a group shot guys!

Curious Doodles Returns to The Pull

It's been a long while since we've had Laura Trimmell of CuriousDoodles out on the press. We were happy to see her come back to The Pull for help with her ever creative line of holiday stationary and fabric goods.


Last Year Laura produced these lovely 28" x 20" 2011 Tea towels, a two color print on an organic cotton canvas tea towel. This year, she decided to do a 1 color print on the same type of tea towels, with the goal of producing some DIY Embroidery kits. This required some really fine printing, as part of the print was supposed to only act as a guide for where people are supposed to embroider. We ended up using a 23" x 31" 320mesh screen. This mesh held the exposure, and better yet, gave crisp clean clear lines.

Originally Laura's design was about 15.5" wide, but a last minute modification brought it to just over 16". Unfortunately, we didn't have any 17" squeegees available, but we found any easy enough resolution, pulling the prints from the side of the platen instead of the front. We also took a little time to review her squeegee technique. Flood first, The Pull the squeegee with even firm pressure at an almost 90˚ angle.

In roughly 4.25 hours, Laura produced about 50ty 16" x 12" prints on her tea towels. About 1.5 hours of that was for setup and cleanup. Here's what the tea towles look like after screen printing, and then after her customers embroider them. Awesome Stuff! You can find out more about these guys by visiting CuriousDoodles Etsy Shop and Blog.

Thanks for printing with us Laura, we hope you had a blast and that you'll be back for reprints soon!

Harkin Family Retreat

Continuing our efforts at The Pull to make reunion shirts that don't suck, we present The Harkin Family Retreat shirts, hot off the press. Jessica and Matt Watson will be spending a weekend with Jessica's family, The Harkins, wearing these shirts that they designed. For those of you not familiar with The Made in Oregon/WhiteStag sign it's a rift off of this iconic Portland sign.


We also made some for the kids, I was able, with some rigging, to get this cute 12month t-shirt printed fairly successfully with the original full size chest print. Normally I'd setup another platen and burn another screen, but they only wanted one of these and I think the end result gave it a nice vintage feel.

Jessica has a total of 16 shirts made up in mixed sizes and styles. All the adult t-shirts were American Apparel 50/50 ( poly/cotton) Heather Blue in either the Standard America Unisex style or the Women's Short Sleeve, while the kids are American Apparel Standard 100% Cotton. Printing was all hand pulled using non-toxic water based inks. In the end the cost of each shirt was just under $18 per, and that includes a rush shipping charge to get the t-shirts here in time to print on.

Harkins I hope you love 'em and I wanna see a group shot from this weekends retreat!

I know family reunion season is almost over but if anyone wants/needs an unsucky reunion shirt let us know, we can print your design or help you create the perfect image to show your family luv!

SurfSkank at The Pull!

This weekend I was happy to have Rebekah Signh of SurfSkank come and make some t-shirts at The Pull! We had a bit of trouble with our water based inks as the late afternoon sun and heat set in on saturday, but we persevered and got this great batch of 4 color women's shirts done this morning. Thanks to Nick Wood over at @Ryonet for giving me some great suggestions for battling the heat. Speaking of Ryonet, I also got to use my new 16" x 22" plattens along with a new platen glue, that did an amazing job of keeping the shirts still despite flashing between each of the 4 colors and even after curing the shirts on platen. This stuff makes the spray mist stuff seem like a complete waste of time.

Let me know what you think of the prints below, the design was made for SurfSkank by Margarita Yerastova to see more of her designs check out: www.yerastova.com

And as always, if you've got an project or idea you'd like to see printed, or would like to actually pull your own prints on, let me know!

HiP at The Pull

Just before the holiday madness Bettie, of HandMade In Portland aka HiP, paid a visit to The Pull to get some totes made. She's posted this great review over at her blog about her time with us and what you could expect if you want to get some screen printing done. HiP is a great resource for learning about Handmade vendors and events here in Portland!

*photo credit Bettie Newell

Holiday Card Time lapse!

While printing this years batch of holiday cards I thought it would be fun to show you some of the process that goes into silk screening by making a fun time lapse of the penguin cards being made! I take you from exposing and hosing to getting the job off press in under 2mins! Don't forget, the cards are now available in my shop!