What should one do with misprints? I honestly don’t have any great answers but here are some mediocre ones. It should be on everyone’s mind because the world is swimming in overstocks and misprints. The average American disposes of almost 70 pounds of clothes per year. H&M was recently found to be incinerating 19 million…
Pinholes Pinholes piss off customers when you send shirts out without you having found them and removed them from your prints. They waste time and money and brain cells with shooting them out with dry cleaning fluid. They make you ruin most garment-dyed shirts (not Comfort Wash or most SanMar) because they can’t be shot…
I often get inquiries from folks trying to figure why the ink has washed off their shirts. I wish I had a dime for every time they are sure it is caused by the garment or by overcuring. Sorry, it isn’t. While both of those things are possible, they are highly highly unlikely to happen.…
I”m on many screenprinter groups on social media, etc. I still see many printers spouting a wealth of misleading information. Today we discuss the test, next post will be on some direction on finding solutions. Before you can get an answer to a problem, it is always best to define the problem. With dye migration,…
There are so many crazy fabrics out there, and we are all trying to decorate them. Transfers are a great option, but even applying transfers can cause scorching. At my shop we recently even had a low temp version causing scorching on some relatively expensive 1/4 zips. For both stopping scorching (who cares if the…
I just joined yet another screenprinter’s group on Facebook. The groups are good ways to share knowledge with your peers. They also are a good place to share complaints with each other, since our families, friends and co-workers long ago stopped wanting to hear about such things. This group had an interesting initiation, to keep…
We print a lot of canvas bags and in particular for made in USA companies who send us the canvas to print before they are sewn. We have printed everything from 6 ounce to 22 ounce and all kinds of weaves. We recently screwed up an order and it reminded me of everything that can…
Usually Tom and I relay a story of our own mistakes, which folks seem to enjoy hearing about. Today it is a mix of my woes and someone else’s. On a Facebook group this morning a fellow traveler in the world of screenprinting was having trouble with screens that would not wash out. What can…
The photo for this post is an example of a very rare time where we were able to fix something we printed and the fix worked out. Our customer had printed a whole lot of expensive tote bags and included part of a logo that they now found offensive. We were able to embroider over…
We recently printed some expensive UnderArmour reversible jerseys for a contract customer. It didn’t work out very well. As you can see from the photograph, on the black background the letters look “yellow” and on the white the letters look “gold.” To be more exact, the white jersey printed at Pantone 1235c and the black…
