A brief video from this year’s Printwear Convention in Long Beach. We ran into a lot of traffic on the way in and rushed into the seminar not realizing that i looked pretty funny with my alfalfa sprout hair!

Wow, our boy Jonathan over @ Jusami keeps coming up with the freshest kiddie prints. This time we’ve got a leopard skin dinosaur, printed in 4 colors with waterbase inks. Be sure to pick one up here: Jusami : Terrific Tees For Kids

Jusami - Dino Leopard Toddler Tee in all of its glory.

All of Jonathan’s designs get printed on Monag brand garments. These garments discharge great and are very well constructed of quality cotton. Many Monag garments are constructed of interlock fabric which feels very soft but durable at the same time. For lack of a better word, the fabric feels “fluffy” to me. We generally print these designs through 230-S Thread mesh and double hit on some colors to get the penetration needed for interlock fabric.

Closeup view of the Dino Leopard print. You can see the shirt fibers which means this is a soft and breathable print.

Another closeup shot of the print showing strong and bright colors on a color that typically gives some problems when trying to discharge.

Some garment manufacturers have gotten hip and are now offering some of their styles with tear away labels. These labels generally get melted in the intense heat needed to sure the ink, but are easily torn ou so that we can print your custom label inside.
In the event that we need to remove a sewn-in label, we resort to very sharp scissors and just snip the label off as close to the neck tape as possible. There may be some label residue left, but it is generally minor and unnoticeable to the typical consumer.

Manufacturer tag residue after cutting out the existing label.

Close-up view of the residue remaining after a tag was cut out. This is typically covered up by the neck tape when folded back over.

Here is how the finished print should look.

This is a great video interview with one of the industry leaders printing with different kinds of water base and discharge inks…

Watch The Video

Waterbase printing is our comfort zone, and we’ve been know to talk down about plastisol ink. Regardless, we do need to use plastisol for some types of fabric. Recently, our clients have begun asking us to print on performance fabrics which are known for their moisture wicking properties. These garments are made of 100% polyester, so we need to resort to plastisol since water based inks will look washed out on this sort of garment.

Luckily, Tim over at Screen Printers Resource set us up with the new line of Rutland “Endurance Inks” which are specifically formulated to print on these sheer 100% polyester fabrics. We are glad that we tried these out because they work quite well.

First we print a clear barrier underbase down, flash it and then lay the top colors on next. This ink cures at 290 degrees so we are able to run our dryer faster and avoid any dye migration issues.
Just like that, we have printing technical garments down pat!

Here is a link to a Printwear Magazine Q&A about printing on ribbed garments.

Read more

A quick notice that the State of California actually LOWERED the sales tax, effective on July 1st 2011. The sales tax in our county went from 9.75% to 8.75%. Good for consumers!

Do you still need a California Sellers Permit? It’s easy to get, just go apply at the CA BOE Website.

Another round of great kids clothes from Jusami, a clothing line out of New York masterminded by Jonathan Sharp. His designs are always simple and iconic with a bit of humor. Jusami chooses to print all designs on garments from Monag, a socially & ethically responsible manufacturer headquartered in Victor, NY. We’ve printed a lot of Monag garments, and they have excellent construction and printability. In fact, some garment colors like royal and purple happen to discharge better than competing brands.

Jonathan definitely has a knack for dinosaurs though he also delves into robots and bugs for further inspiration.

We print all of these designs with super soft waterbase inks and then fold and bag for retail sale. Many of the Monag styles are very thick garments and some are constructed of interlock fabric. Because of this we end up stroking many of the colors twice to get bright prints that penetrate down into the fabric and last.

Jusami Dino Girl Onesie - i mentioned he likes dinosaurs right?

Jusami Toddler Robot

Jusami Pteradactyl print. Is that how you spell Pteradactyl?

We printed this great design for Bilt Unlimted to use at the 2011 NPC Big Sky Championship. Lots of subtle blends and transparencies that we were able to reproduce nicely with pigmented discharge ink. We used 4 print colors on the front and got a lot of depth due to careful separation, color selection and tight registration.

Lots of muscles on the front of this shirt!

Sponsor logos printed with bright discharge white ink (our own secret recipe).

closeup to show the details in the simulated background transparencies and subtle transitions between greys

sweet white fade at the tops of the letters

Screenprint Geek Details

We ended up using all 225 S-Thread mesh for the front print and a 156 S-thread screen for the bright white back print. Separations were all done manually in photoshop with channels. Careful use of the “Gradient Map” function allowed us to pull out the soft tonal transitions between the greys and white in this image. We also chose to create a dummy black plate during separation and used this to knock out the other channels a bit. We did not print the black plate but simply used it to pull a bit of info out of the other channels which can help compensate for dot gain with waterbased inks.

a lot of muscles!

At the request of Fruit of the Loom we recently put together this step-by-step tutorial on printing discharge ink and foil together in a design. We have an article and photos of the process coming out in the next issue of Impressions Magazine. A copy of the article can be viewed here.

We also put together a video of the process and posted it here: How to Print Discharge and Foil on T-Shirts : Jitz Fighting Apparel