The journey of a designer t-shirt
We at Dallas t-shirt printing thought we would share with you the stages of the process until you receive a designed t-shirt in the form of general information.
What are the stages through which a design t-shirt becomes wearable?
The part that interests us is actually about the design and the application of this design on the t-shirt. However, let’s not forget that the world was once a cloud of gas and dust, we would like to talk about the cutting and planting stage to the best of our knowledge. Because the properties of the fabrics can also affect the type of printing to be done.
Cutting and sewing phase of the design t-shirt
A t-shirt is, in its crudest terms, made of fabric. There are many types of fabric available. We do not have control over all of these. We are not experts on what exactly is in the main raw material of the fabric. We seem to hear you say yarn or something. No, certain proportions of polyester and cotton are mixed into the fabrics. There are many reasons for this, and it also affects the price and type of printing.
What are the types of fabric used for designer t-shirts?
We can say that it is generally a type of fabric that we do not prefer. Because we thought that it is one of the fabrics with the highest plastic content and negatively affects the breathing of the human skin, we decided not to use polyester fabric t-shirts in our products. We do not sew t-shirts, but since we procure the t-shirts we use from the manufacturer, we can make some interventions in the production process. We sometimes decide on the fabric type of the series produced. Polyester t-shirts are not our preferred fabric type. Instead, we prefer cotton fabric. The reason for this is that it is made of cotton, which is a natural product, and is healthy. Apart from these, there are many types of fabric as you can imagine, and since we do not have full knowledge of this subject, let’s close the fabric issue by stating that the fabric type we use is cotton.
What are the printing techniques available? How does design affect t-shirts?
The printing technique also has an impact on the design, apart from its relationship with the fabric of the t-shirt.
sublimation transfer printing
We can talk about sublimation printing, which can be done in the form of transfer on polyester fabric. But we would like to point out that we do not use this printing technique on t-shirts. We use this type of printing only on mug printing. Briefly speaking, it is a form of printing made by pressing the printout taken on a special paper with special sublimation ink onto the t-shirt with a hot press brought to a certain temperature. The ink on the paper transfers onto the t-shirt by sublimation with heat. This only works on t-shirts made from light-coloured polyester fabric. It does not work on dark colored t-shirts or cotton t-shirts.
DTG direct to fabric printing
Apart from this, there is a method of printing directly on the fabric. The t-shirt is placed on a tray placed under a special printer, and the printer writes on the t-shirt as if writing on paper. This type of printing can also be printed on dark colored or cotton t-shirts.
screen printing
If we do not mention screen printing, which is one of the oldest printing techniques, its masters will be offended by us. Although this type of printing is the oldest type of printing, it is still used in high volume production. The pattern, which is exposed with chemicals on a hoop with a perforated sieve stretched on silk, passes through the sieve holes and is processed onto the fabric, and printing takes place. Although it is the healthiest and most durable type of printing, if t-shirts are to be printed in very high quantities, this method is also the most cost-effective type of printing. It is a method whose details and processing times are quite long and labor intensive. I don’t have to take the hoop in one go and press it immediately. So we tried it and saw how difficult it was.
From time to time, when we need to mass print t-shirts in our workshop, we use the screen printing method. Because the costs per print decrease significantly. However, preparing a printing template for a single t-shirt costs a lot of money. Additionally, there are some limitations with screen printing. For example, you cannot make a photo print, you can only pose vector drawings on the plate and print only a single color on a single plate. If you want to make more than one color, you have to print more than one stencil on top of each other. It is a very enjoyable type of printing that we cannot stop talking about, but since we generally make personalized t-shirt designs, we cannot use this type of printing in such works.
Types of printing we use
We can use many types of printing. We can use digital printing technique in some of our projects and screen printing technique in some of our projects. The technique we use most is the direct printing technique on the t-shirt. The most ideal and fastest solution for personalized design, design-your-own t-shirts is digital printing. Apart from this, if we need to make a creation, we project the designs we have determined and print them with the screen printing technique in our workshop. Regardless of the technique we use, we always make it our priority to care about human health. We do not use any chemicals or dyes that are harmful to health.
Life of prints
The printing life of t-shirts is also related to the printing technique. While some types of prints do not last a lifetime, some may have a limited lifespan. While prints that do not come off for a lifetime can be disturbing due to the excessive touch sensation they create on the surface, prints that do not form any surface on the t-shirt can become deformed after a while.
Our t-shirts
We want to offer you more personalized t-shirts rather than a production line t-shirt created with high industrial systems. While mass-produced t-shirts produce low costs, this can lead to high costs. However, the main thing is to present you a t-shirt with features that distinguish it from others. We are eager to produce more personalized t-shirts as we move forward. We hope that together we can produce special t-shirts for everyone and anyone.