Printing graphic images onto fabric/t-shirts

[ShaneBaby]

Hello, I was wondering how to transfer graphic images onto fabric, specifically t-shirts? I am not actually a graphic designer by trade. I'm a freelance author/illustrator. I usually work with paints or the like, but I have some graphic images I would really like to put on t-shirts, and I don't want to use a service like cafe-press that basically rapes you in terms of profit margin. I know its possible to do it yourself because I know of other independent artists that do, I just can't for the life of me learn how, not using search engines at least.

[D-Frag]

its called "Screenprinting" which is basically making negatives out of your art for each color used in the actual screen.

i googled "Screenprinting, how to" and this came up, looks usefull. Enjoy!

http://community.livejournal.com/craftgrrl/3674467.html

[urstwile]

How much volume are you talking about? Do you want to do a lot of t-shirts? Or is this for personal use only?

[CamarotaDesign]

You should be able to find a screenprinting shop in your city. They're everywhere.

[PrintDriver]

Depends on the art whether you can home screen it or not.
4-color is a little difficult.
If you have 4-color art and you can live with a white shirt color, find someone with a dye sub printer and discuss cost. It ain't cheap to do small quantities in the shirt biz.

[Teej]

If this is for personal use then you can in fact buy special sheets of inkjet paper which you can print on and then iron onto a t-shirt. I'm not saying this is a particularly good way of getting artwork onto a t-shirt, but it is very cheap and certainly worth a bit of experimentation.

[ShaneBaby]

OKay, I looked into screenprinting but that is not how you transfer a DIGITAL image onto fabric. Also, in response to the other posts, I'm looking to make a fairly goodsized amount of t-shirts, so the iron on system is not going to work.

[PrintDriver]

You either have to find someone who can do 4-color process screen printing or you find someone doing dye sublimation to t-shirts. Dye sub is the only way (other than Iron-Ons) that I know to transfer digital imaging to fabric. But there is no white ink and the colors are not opaque. So your shirt has to be white or very light colored.

There are, maybe, somewhere, some people doing UV printing to T-shirts. Some of those printers may use white ink. I posted a link around here somewhere to a t-shirt print machine that I can't find now that might have been helpful.

[Logo-Mechanix]

There is a process called sublimation that uses an inkjest printout and a heat press but not good for large runs and I was never really impressed with the quality.

[Craig B]

Definitely contact a local printer and ask if they print t-shirts. They'll walk you through how they want your art provided. Also, show them the image and ask them how well the image will work

For example, are your colors bright and saturated? ... they might not be able to match them real well, if you have a lot of color, it'll definitely be a 4 color process which generally doesn't look as good when printed., is your original art large and detailed and goign to be reduced in size? ... it might lose something too. Things like that.

Here's a link (http://www.qrsts.com/artwork/) that helps answer some of those questions.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not recomending the above link as someone to use to get the job done. I know nothing about them. I just thought they had some good info concerning preparing your artwork.

[PrintDriver]

Dye sub is great for banners and such. I use it all the time.
For t-shirts, I wouldn't know.
Quality as always depends on the source.