Hey, let's get this section going, gang! :)

I thought silkscreening took a big set up?

On T-shirts:

Once upon a time, a T-shirt shop tossed out a bunch of quart cans of the paint they use on the shirts. The labels said that the paint stayed wet until it was heated to several hundred degrees whereupon it cures. Oh, so that's how they do it. I didn't save any of the cans, because the heating requirement was not very appealing.

On silk screening:

I have a big box of brand new decades-old packages of nylons. Do you think nylon stocking material could be used, when slit open and stretched on a frame, to do silkscreen?

But what about the image? Doesn't it have to be in effect a negative*? Wherever on the screen something is to be printed has to be open to the ink, whereas everywhere there is not to be ink, the screen must be blocked. So how do you block the screen around, say, some writing?

Without googling it, there must be some kind of photosensitive process that allows you to transfer a prepared image to the screen, else you would have to take a blocked screen and carve off the open areas with an Xacto knife. That would be tedious in the extreme unless you were printing some simple design like a happy face.

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*The exception would be intentionally printing a negative image where the ink is everywhere except where the image is, i.e. the contrasting unprinted cloth would show through.

You are correct that the finished screen must be permeable to ink where ink will show and vice versa.

There are a number of ways to do this.

One of the most common ways for lo-res silkscreen work is to take a full-size sketch of what you want to print and paint (trace), using silkscreen resist, on the screen in the areas where you do not want ink to show, using a fine artist brush. You can get silkscreen resist at any art house. Do a google search for "silkscreen resist" and you will drink from a fire hose on this one.

If you want to do, say, a tee with a written saying, do a word (or whatever) document with what you want to say in a VERY LARGE and bold typeface using the font you want, and use that as the sketch and paint silkscreen resist where the white areas on your paper are.

Another way is to use various papers, films or tapes to make a low(er) res stencil on the silkscreen, again, film/paper/tape will be where you do not want the ink to show. Do a google search for "silkscreen stencil material" and you will get results in abundance.

If you want to get really fancy, there are quite a few types of silkscreen photo resist products out there. To use these, you will need a full-size master of the original artwork printed on some kind of film, either photo film (such as Kodalith) or such things as overhead film that you can get (or used to be able to, overheads are an endangered species) at Office Depot/Max and such. Photo resists are used by everyone from hobbyists to professional production houses, so there's quite a range out there. Google "silkscreen photo resist" and you will get lotsa hits. One that I used (quite a few years ago, forget the brand) you could expose in direct sunlight.

Photo resist can do a higher res than can stencils or manual resist, but there are some limits. Photo resist has a significant learning curve and a bit of trial and error. Painted resist and stencils are usually more successful for the beginner.

Anyway, there are TONS of tutorials and videos and such on the web about how to do basic silkscreening. Google is yer friend here. Also, some art supply shops (see if there's a Blick shop near you) do classes and workshops on silkscreening. Some community colleges and artist co-ops will also have sessions on how to learn silkscreening.

Hope this helps.

Also into photography and nearing retirement.  My retirement date is April 13, 19 days from now.  Recently had 3 pictures chosen as finalists in a contest and won the Architecture section of the event.  My main focus though is nature photography which I hope to do much more of starting in 3 weeks.

Good morning, Happy Easter!