What's a Yudo?

In my last post I showed you the Chococat pouch I made for my partner in the "I Love Cats or Dogs" swap on Craftster.  Today I will show you the rest of the package, and at the same time I will answer the question, "what's a Yudo??"

My partner has a Pointer-mix dog, and she had a t-shirt on her Wists with this phrase and a different dog silhouette.  I decided to try something new and make the shirt for her, using the Yudo.  I wasn't sure about the size of the shirt, so I played it safe and made her TWO shirts! (She said the pink one fits her, and the blue one fits her husband--perfect!)

And as long as I had the "big mutts" design on hand, I also used it on a morsbag for her.  (I love morsbags!  I have several, and they are big and handy and useful!!) 

The blue ball in the pictures is a fleece catnip toy for her two cats; it is simple to make and I will show how to make it one day soon!

The picture above shows the back of the morsbag; I added a pocket using a doggy print, and used the same fabric for the handles of the bag.

Finally, I will answer the question:  THIS (below) is a Yudo!  It is a machine/system for making silk-screened items.  It is made by provo craft, the same company that makes the cricut machine.

My daughter (the art major) asked for the Yudo for graduation from high school last year, so of course I got it for her.  She thought she would make and sell t-shirts on Etsy.  I had to buy a lot of accessories in addition to the basic machine, such as the silk screens, paint, emulsion, transparencies...and it isn't cheap!  Then we tried it out, and quickly found out it isn't simple either!  You have to print or draw an image onto a transparency, then prepare a silk screen with emulsion, then wait for it to dry (inside the machine), then expose the image on the screen (inside the machine), then wash off the unexposed emulsion, then wait for it to dry again (inside the machine)...THEN you put the t-shirt and silk screen on the machine and apply the paint.  Then you wait for it to dry. 

We made one t-shirt (which came out perfectly on the first try) and then... the Yudo gathered dust for almost a year until I pulled it out for this swap.  As you can see from the picture above, it can produce a great image on fabric (but I didn't take a picture of the t-shirt and bag I made that were FAILURES...and ended up in the garbage...)

Long story short, it's a lot of time, effort and money, so if you really want to silk screen something, this will do the job; but I think next time I will try the freezer-paper method!  At least I know it won't cost very much!