I would like to create a few T-shirts for my own personal collection. I'm however only interested in printing on a certain fabric i have come to understand as "100% Pima Cotton." This style shirt can be found with prints from "Express." It is a thin soft fine fabric that feels very luxurious. Does anyone know of a place, vendor, person etc that might be able to meet my needs?
You can get individual shirts, and depending on how much you buy, you may get a dozen, piece, or sample price. Alternative also offers Pima Cotton for some of their styles. The Pima Cotton is so incredibly soft it's just awesome. If you're printing them, use water base inks or inks with "no hand" (so you can barely - or can't feel the print). You don't want to print heavy plastisol ink or digital or vinyl transfers on these since the shirts tend to be super light weight...
Alternative are who I was going to suggest for one-offs as well. If you search the forums for pima you'll find a bunch of other companies, but most (not all) of them are geared towards wholesale.
i know this is going to seem noobish but im not interested in doing the printing myself but rather have them printed and mailed to me. similar to customink.com and zazzle. where you select style and logo/text and they send you the custom shirt.
i don't have the know how nor the resources to do my own prints.
Atm there is only about 3 different shirts im looking to get made so any ideas would be awesome.
So you want a fulfilment centre with a pima cotton blank... hmm... tall order, but might be possible.
I'd check to see if Continental Clothing do a pima cotton. Then look for sites like Cafepress that offer Alternative Apparel and/or Continental Clothing. There may not be any.
If you're willing to settle for organic cotton (still nicer than the regular stuff) it would be a lot easier.
One other option would be to post in our Recommendations and Referrals section: a member with a DTG printer might be more flexible about ordering blanks from specific companies (some of the major wholesalers stock Alternative Apparel for example) and custom printing on them.
You can get individual shirts, and depending on how much you buy, you may get a dozen, piece, or sample price. Alternative also offers Pima Cotton for some of their styles. The Pima Cotton is so incredibly soft it's just awesome. If you're printing them, use water base inks or inks with "no hand" (so you can barely - or can't feel the print). You don't want to print heavy plastisol ink or digital or vinyl transfers on these since the shirts tend to be super light weight...
Dan, this is great advice... and exactly the type of answer I'm looking for. I too am looking to design a set of shirts specifically from alt. apparel and am looking at their eco-heather and pima cotton weights, both of which are relatively light and thin. That being said, I'm running into problems finding small vol printers that will do water-based here in Toronto; however, they have suggested using a high mesh screen using plastisol (or a Chino print which I've heard is a water-based clone but know little about) to eliminate heaviness. What are your thoughts on this? Can one achieve this well with plastisol?
Custom Print Pima Cotton 
