How We Make Decorated Garments

We use several different processes to produce our decorated garments - some are appropriate only for certain garments other for everything.

HEAT TRANSFER DECORATION

Using a variety of vinyl, cloth and flock sheet materials, the design is cut out colour by colour using a computer controlled device called a "plotter" - it basically cuts out the relevant shapes or letters from a sheet of material. The surplus material is then picked off the carrier sheet, and the resulting design is placed on the garments and pressed at temperatures of up to 250' for varying amounts of time (depending upon the material of the garment and the material for the image). The process is to a degree manual and it therefore ensures that a level of quality control takes place during production. 

Most garments with this type of decoration can be washed at up to 60' heat in a normal washing machine. The design should NOT be directly ironed, rather the garment should be turned inside out and a tea towel of other cloth placed between the hot iron and the shirt.

DIRECT TO GARMENT PRINTING

A relatively new technology, which allows printing of photo realistic pictures, graphics and logos onto a variety of garments in full colour. Much more refined images than you could get with screen printing. Also this technology allows complex text and graphics to be produced together on pale and dark garments. For dark garment printing it applies a base layer of heavy white inks, before overlaying the coloured inks. The whole print area is then heat treated at heats of up to 230'.

Garments printed in this way should be washed  using a 30' wash in a normal washing machine. The design should NOT be directly ironed, rather the garment should be turned inside out and a tea towel of other cloth placed between the hot iron and the shirt.

EMBROIDERY

Using threads, (even our new SILVER and GOLD thread), your design will be digitised and embroidered onto your chosen garment. The range of garments which can be embroidered upon is immense (including just about everything on this site for example!). You design can be of up to 6 colours (our current embroidery kit has 6 heads per machine).

If your image is complex we may need to have thit professionally digitised by one of our partners. This can be competitive (usually £10 or less). However, mostly we can avoid such charges and do the work internally - our highly trained and skilled staff have plenty of experience digitising designs.