The Ink Kitchen

Andy Anderson is one of the best printers this industry has ever seen.  I love that his approach to printing is art/craft first and science second.  Andy’s latest article in Impressions is well worth the read.

I should start by saying that I do not consider Motion Textile to be a discharge printer, but we’re pretty damn good at discharge printing.  To clarify, I’m saying that there are printers whom primarily print waterbase/discharge and do so very proficiently, efficiently, and profitably.  I think the only way to get to that place is…

Although a digital show, direct digital printing has not stopped other forms of decoration, nor stopped innovation in other forms. Transfers were one form going strong, here we see new forms or improvements for transfers that resist dye migration or can stretch with the new fabrics, apply to odd shaped substrates (shoes!) or machines that enable quick…

A booth with a display of furoshiki, tradtional Japanese wrapping cloths, caught my eye at FESPA Digital last week. It was a Japanese company called Denatex, who were promoting their new zero-emission, smoke-free sublimation transfer system. They collaborated with a traditional furoshiki maker from Kyoto to create their display items, which were beautiful. And they were handing out squares of printed…

A few notes while passing through the Amsterdam airport and looking at shirts. I don’t know about the rest of you in the business but before I can even think of how clever (or not) a shirt might be, my eyes automatically scan it for being out of register, dye migration, off the mark right…

Improvements to digital printing on fabric, improvements to transfers for textile, improvements to sublimation on fabric, and yes even improvements for screenprinting on textiles. In many ways it is an exciting time to be a decorator of garments because so many techniques are possible and they all seem to be improving. The look on this…

Ok, you have a shirt and it has some or all polyester content, what do you do? Too many printers I see P & P it. “P & P” is what I call “print and pray” and no matter what religion you do or don’t follow, I would keep prayer out of your printing operation.…

Like it or not, the ability to print with silicone ink is going to have to find its place in your tool box. The pros are: it’s super stretchy zero dye migration on polyesters it’s cheaper than an insurance policy when you need to print on a $150 stretchy polyester jacket. The cons are: short pot…

Tom posted Saturday about the “literally” hundreds of carts he has at his shop. I had one of those moments a few years ago where we finally got more carts, and I said to myself, what a total dumb ass I am. I can’t tell you how many years we had been putting shirts on…

I majored in Philosophy and Religion in college. I guess I am drawn to the philosophical underpinnings of what people do. Someone once told me about the concept of “love of work” that Germans have and used some expression with the German word for work “Arbeit.” I never have found where that exact expression comes…