flytrap

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knows a good place to read up on the techniques used to make shirts sold at Buckle and other similar store outlets.
I'm looking for info on shirt vendors. I used to use Beefy-Ts and China-T's way back, but I'm looking for more organic bamboo types of shirts.
Can you buy shirts that are already distressed, or is there a good technique to distress large quantities of shirts.
I would like to also have some embroidery on the shirts, don't know if it's in the budget or if Im getting ahead of myself.
I'm also thinking about going water based to get a softer more translucent look, and I'm also interested in metallic inks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm am currently trying to decide to set up a little shop in the garage, or maybe just hook up with someone who can print my designs for me.

I'm sure there are pluses and minuses going either way.

Thanks again for any help.
David

 

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bornover

David, you ask more than you know in your post. So, I will help out as much as I can.

Searching this forum is a great place to read about the different techniques being used today on printed shirts. Also a good site I like is http://www.gomediazine.com/ , check out the tutorial section for graphic design tips.

As far as how things are printed on the production floor, I know of only a few good resources. The main one is to go to the ISS, SGIA or NBM shows that might be near you. You can talk to manufactures about their equipment and what you need to print what you want.

Again, at the shows you will find all the garment vendors you ever wanted to know about and more. As far as some companies that make distressed shirts, two are: Bare Apparel and Alternative Apparel.

Rodney has a section in the forum where you can ask contract printers to contact you. Contract printing is a good way to go if you can hit the 250+ amounts per design. It starts to become pretty cost effective once you hit those numbers for a run on a design.

You can find just about all the information you are asking about on the internet as well. It might take a few months of searching and reading, but you will get there.

__________________
Mark
www.twicehis.com

 

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flytrap

Thanks for the info. I've been debating the cost to open up a little shop in my garage versus contacting a printer. I know I should be able to supply the graphics needed once I know what the printer's requirements are for art. There is still that hands on voice inside of me, that would like to make them myself, and have complete control over the quality. But I'm sure that will be months of building the shop and getting back up to get the quality I'm looking for in my garment line.
I used to also do serigraphs back in the day, and thought it would be fun doing some small limited edition prints as well. But as I'm sure your well aware thats a whole different can of worms.
To many ideas and not enough hours in the day.

Thanks again,
David

 

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