The Samuel Adams Boston Brewery gift shop was looking to have some shirts done with a vintage football feel. We were to use a very simple distressed “84” as that is the year they were founded. They loved the garment as well as the distressed numbers and wanted to brand the shirt in a way…
Wednesday I pointed out some trends as identified by pals in the industry, and here is the third part of our five parts on fashion trends in the screenprinting world. Mike Manning of LAT’s talked about the promotional world more and more looking like the retail world. He sees his retail oriented pieces increasingly being…
Part 2 of 5 about fashion trends in the screenprinting world. Hanes reports increasing interest in the soft fabrics of their Nano collection, whether t-shirts or hoodies. This is true of both unisex and women’s shirts. Thinner fabrics are gaining traction, and their lightweight Nano hoodie has particularly been a favorite. Folks seem to know…
I asked friends in the industry where fashion is going and got quite a few similar responses. I’ll put a few up today and tomorrow. We just designed a shirt on this alternative apparel piece which is a football retro-looking shirt. It hits a few bases that fashion is headed toward: sporty and retro sporty…
In this day and age, it is not really a good excuse to plead ignorance about where your shirts are made. There is usually some information on the label, and then there is this thing called “the internet” where you can do either a little or a lot of research. In the coming weeks we’ll…
Some years ago we did some work for a major sporty retail brand. At one point they added to their huge book of rules that we had to put a piece of cardboard inside every box, so that they could slice open the boxes (recklessly) and not cut a shirt. I asked if instead we…
Alternative Apparel recently conducted a t-shirt contest to highlight their printed fabric products. “Prints on prints”, it’s a good concept. But, when you consider what you typically see in the established t-shirt competitions (mostly bad designs and mostly mediocre printing), the concept of showcasing clever and tasteful design, decent printing, and great blanks for a t-shirt contest is actually brilliant.…
As a contract decorator taking responsibility of your customer’s product can be nerve-racking, especially when the numbers are big or the per piece price is high. And of course high-end products always have a high-end difficulty factor. We recently ran a print on some very pricey jackets by Lululemon. Aside from taking our time to…
More and more tools become available to give customers what they want. You want a soft print on a fabric that had dye migration problems and it also has to stretch and by the way, keep it bright white? No problem. Well… usually there are some compromises, but you have to deliver at least close…
Discharge printing is getting more and more popular as a way to produce soft prints on soft shirts. It doesn’t always work. The process is that the discharge agent in the ink combines with water and heat to neutralize the dye in the shirt. The color of the ink then goes into the fabric and there is…
