Printing Your T-shirts: An Overview

You've picked your textiles, created a t-shirt design and placed your order. So what happens next?

The first step in getting your design onto a t-shirt involves printing films for the various colors used. A graphic artist will look at your artwork and determine the best method of printing the colors.

The two main methods of printing colors are spot colors and four-color process. Spot colors are individual colors that are printed separately. There are 100's of pre-mixed colors and an infinite number of colors that can be mixed to specification (e.g. Pantone Matching System colors).

Four-color process physically blends four colors (Cyan (sky blue), Magenta (hot pink), Yellow and Black) on the textile to create a large variety of colors. Four-color process, also known as CMYK, is used to simulate photographic work and graphics with sophisticated shading and textural effects. A hybrid form of printing known as simulated process is sometimes used, combining components of both process and spot color printing.

The graphic artist creates transparent acetate films of each color and prints them in black along with registration marks and identifying information. The films are then collected into an envelope with printing instructions and sent to the be burned onto screens.

Each color of your t-shirt design is then exposed via a high-intensity lightbox onto a fine mesh screen that has been coated with photosensitive emulsion. These screens were initially made from silk, thus the origin of the term silkscreen. When the emulsion is exposed, it hardens and becomes insoluble to water. The black sections of the acetate film prevent light from getting to the emulsion immediately beneath them. Those sections not exposed will dissolve in water. The screen is placed in a high-pressure washing unit where the unexposed sections of emulsion are washed out of the screen. What remains is, in effect, an intricate stencil for that particular color of ink.

While the Art Department is working on your films, your t-shirts are being ordered from wholesalers. Sometimes this can be a challenge; calls can be made all across the country looking for a particular size or color of t-shirt. When the textiles arrive, they are counted in and checked against the order for accuracy and then taken to the screen printers.

A multiple-head press holds a number of screens from as few as four to as many as sixteen. The screens are arranged radially and rotate over palettes that the t shirts are loaded on. There are both automatic and manual presses; on automatics the rotation is handled by pneumatics while smaller manual presses are physically rotated by the printer. Each screen is placed onto a bracket, or head, and locked into place. The printer then carefully adjusts the printed images from each screen until they are all in correct alignment for the final, combined image. The correct color of ink is added to each screen and is forced through the screen's openings by pulling a squeegee from the bottom of the screen to the top. A number of different factors affect the final silkscreen print result, including the hardness of the squeegee, the angle and force of the pull used, and the type of ink used.

After printing, your t-shirts are run through a high-temperature dryer to cure the ink so it will bind to the fibers of the material. A final test print is approved by the graphic artist working on your design, and the run of t-shirts is printed.

Machine Embroidery Designs Enhance Wearables & Crafts

Has the machine embroidery bug bitten you yet? Do you want to get into machine embroidery, but just don’t know where to start? Do you wonder if the investment is worth it?

About four years ago, I purchased my first embroidery machine, and I have been hooked to the art ever since. I’ve slowly built a library of designs and I’ve learned how to hoop, stabilize, and choose the right thread!

I started by researching the vast array of embroidery machines available, many of which also do standard sewing. Machines are priced anywhere from $400 up to many thousands. Search the Internet or go to your local Sew Vac or fabric store for a demonstration! Choose a machine based upon how much embroidery you want to do and what your budget will allow.

To tell the truth, I felt weird about using machine embroidery at first. I wanted to be the designer and I didn’t want to depend upon someone else’s creativity to make my work look beautiful. Then, I discovered that I had lots of choices and I couldn’t resist the designs that are available. I found quilt embroideries that you can use to quilt blocks in the hoop and get better results than using free-motion or a long arm machine. I found all sorts of vintage looks in redwork, bluework, and even lace that you embroider right on a dissolvable stabilizer in the thread color that matches your project best. Of course there are many modern detailed designs in every theme from babies and kids to holidays and weddings.

Embroidery designs are “digitized” from artwork. While most sites sell artwork that can be picked up by many digitizers, some sites selling machine embroidery files such as SWAK Embroidery and You Can Make This also have designs from original hand-drawn art. This means that those designs can only be purchased from those sites and therefore, you won’t see them just anywhere.

One great thing about embroidery designs is that they have a color palette selected for you in advance, but you can also adjust the colors to your specifications by choosing from color families and tones. Filled designs are those made up of all embroidered stitches. Appliqué designs allow you to choose fun fabrics to add your own artistic expression to the finished product. If you make some cute cropped pants, but need a matching shirt, find an appliqué design for a tee shirt and use the fabric from the pants in the appliqué to add just the right matching touch.

Some designs are really versatile in that a change of thread color can make the design work for any occasion. Take a balloon design and use thread in your child’s favorite colors. Makes realistic looking oak leaves in any color-palette from spring yellows and greens to fall reds, browns, and oranges. Change the colors in a cute cheerleader design or collegiate alphabet to match your school colors. Even merge two designs or add lettering to a design to make it yours, using your embroidery machine or digitizing software.

Is it worth the investment? Definitely! What could be better than to be able to make a professional looking embroidery design either on ready-to-wear or hand sewn clothing, quilts, or other projects. Even create a business for yourself by creating embroidered items for others!

Basic Web Design Tips

Don't bother with splash pages.
A splash page is normally a pointless page people put on their websites as an introduction. The page normally contains some sort of image on with a big click here to enter sign, or sometimes people don't say anything and just hope you will click on the picture to enter their site. Splash pages are fairly pointless and it is just creating more work for your visitor as they have to click the mouse button an extra time just to see the content of your site. By removing the splash page the visitor can get to see the best parts of your site straight away, without having to wait for a pointless page to load.

Keep your navigation simple.
To put it simply if your navigation is too complicated and people don't understand how to get around your site this is a huge web design fault. If a visitor doesn't know how to navigate around your site they will get frustrated and end up leaving. Keep your navigation simple and try to avoid using scripts or complicated flash based menus, not all browsers support scripts, so some of your visitors might be missing out on important.

Keep your paragraphs reasonable readable lengths.
Although having lots of relative and informative content on your website is good, it is a bad idea to have the blocks of text to big. Not everyone likes reading and to much can deter a visitor. If you keep your paragraphs in reasonable lengths it is much easier for a visitor to read and absorb.

Use CSS for style.
Make sure your text is readable by using a standard font which is compatible with other systems. While some fonts may look good on your computer other people might not have that font installed. It is good web design practice to use CSS when building you site. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are a perfect way to set and adjust your websites font and size settings. The great thing about using CSS is that you can change the look of your whole site simply by editing the one file.

Test how your site looks in other web browsers
When you are building your site and still in the web design stage it is important to check how it looks on other browsers, just because it looks fine in internet explorer doesn't mean it looks good on Firefox or Opera. A lot of people use alternative browsers and if the website looks like a complete mess then you will loose that visitor for ever. You can check your sites web design to make sure it complies with the web standards at the w3.org website. Validating your page will help to ensure it works properly on other browsers.