It is exactly what you think it is. I’ve ordered one of each of the leading manufacturers lightweight 100% cotton ringspun t-shirts to see who discharges the best. Each shirt is the same size (small) and same color (black). Each shirt will get the same size logo, printed with the same amount of hits/flashes/strokes etc. Once printed each shirt will be heat gun cured to a proper white then brought through the dryer to fully cure the next morning. After proper curing in the dryer all shirts will be washed, together, with dye-free liquid soap in cold water then run through the dryer on low.

The shirts will be graded according to the following:

1. Initial feel before being washed/printed.
2. How well it takes the ink.
3. Clarity of the cured discharge print. (white as opposed to cream)
4. Feel and quality after being washed and dried. (does the garment fade?)

Things I wont be judging the shirts on is price, country of origin, warmth or coolness of the black dye in the shirt, and overall cut of the garment as that would be personal preference and have nothing to do with the printing process.

So what does the winner get? The winner will be the shirt I order for my upcoming t-shirt line this summer. Not that anyone really cares who I use but I thought I would have a little fun with my research and development aspect of all this. I’m also in no way affiliated with any of the above companies nor am I being endorsed by anyone to do this, it’s all my goofy little idea and I’d be doing it whether I post it up here or not. I’m not making any money off this, in fact I paid for every shirt that will be used in this process with my own money.

So the question is… WHO DO YOU THINK WILL WIN!?

Got two shirts in the same week so I’m doing another double shirt post. The first one I got in Monday I had ordered last friday or so from Milk & Eggs. They were quick to pack and quick to ship which is a huge plus to me. These guys do a lot of things right when it comes to their product. I really like how they stuck stickers on the mailer, as well as a stamp of their logo on it which gives you the sense that the company wants to come across as more hands-on than corporate. I dunno, I just liked it. The shirt came in the paper bubble mailer as well as inside a plastic baggie along with a sticker and 1inch pin which was fun as I wasn’t expecting them.

I picked this one because I was interested to see how they were going to handle the royal in on royal shirt aspect of the design. The shirt is American Apparel because the tag says so which is reasurring as some folks who use AA will re-tag the shirt and claim its AA but in all honesty without that tag how are you going to really know its not another ringspun shirt like a tultex or anvil? I also like how rather than putting a custom tag in the neck they have sewn one into the sleeve which is the new cool hip thing to do, and I kind of like it. So many guys I know will cut the tags out of neck as soon as they get it home so this kind of saves you the trouble of having those custom tags being thrown away as well as being visible outside the garment.

Overall I loved the shirt, great presentation, great design, registration is spot on and not too thick of ink. Only major issue I had was with the look of the ink. We all know plastisol is thick and goopy and when cured becomes a plastic wall on a shirt. Here the issue occurs when you run plastisol on a high end ringspun shirt. The shirt is so soft that the plastisol puckers up and leaves this fuzzy look and feel to the ink. Other than that it’s an awesome shirt and great print.

Milk & Eggs
Packaging: Awesome
Labeling: Awesome
Design quality: Awesome
Ink quality: pocky plastisol issues
Price: Standard @ 18.95

On to the TeeFury grab bag tee I finally got in last night. Teefury isn’t like most shops that only handle a few hundred/thousand pieces a month, these guys release a new shirt every day for a very low price. The catch is, once the day is over the shirt can no longer be ordered and is gone forever! A pretty cool store concept and with new artists for nearly every design it’s pretty awesome and keeps things fresh.

They do have their own custom tags on the inside of the shirt which is cool, shirts are made in Mexico so I have no idea who their supplier is but it does feel a tad guildan-ish. (not that there is anything wrong with that) It definitely keeps their costs down and lets them crank out awesome designs on a daily release basis. Since I ordered the grab bag I just selected “small” and they select the shirt at random which was pretty exciting to see what kind of shirt I ended up with.

Only viable issue with the shirt at all is the registration was a little off on the pickups, that’s probably more because in general you don’t trap black because it has a tendency to bleed over anyway.  Other than that the ink quality is pretty good for plastisol. You generally get a better print going dark ink on a light shirt.

TeeFury
Packaging: Awesome
Labeling: Good
Design quality: Great
Ink quality: plastisol, off registration
Price: Steal @ 5$

So I have been wanting to start a little hobby biz selling hand printed limited edition shirts online for several months now. One of the biggest things holding me back was picking a name. I can’t legally or safely use “JetGirlArt” because of the comic reference and blah blah blah, plus it’s the name of my blog which I don’t make any money on whatsoever. The first idea I came up with was “White Rabbit Apparel” which would have been great to have a little white bunny logo to discharge out of the shirts and since I’m printing on organic tees and stuff the environmentally friendly aspect would work with the rabbit and all. Too bad some yankees already have a custom apparel and art store set up as “White Rabbit Gallery” and thats too similar to me. Don’t wanna look like I’m ripping off another indie company. After talking with Cody who suggested to go fully organic and enviro-friendly because it was more “Austin” like and would sell better since its a niche market anyway. So we just went with Austin Apparel.

Now I had one big reservation using Austin Apparel because of one thing…. American Apparel. At first it looks like a total massive name ripoff. However if you look at it they are two different things. American Apparel produces the actual apparel, I am just printing on it (ironically enough on American Apparel’s organic line lol) Can’t really get in trouble for using the name of the town in a biz name when you base it in the town. We do have plans to move back into actual Austin within the next year, plus the entire thing is online/mobile to begin with. I did check that there wasn’t any printshops or clothing lines already named Austin Apparel. GoDaddy did have the .com parked at 1500 dollars so we went with the .net because we’re not fascist capitalists. (well, I’m not anyway)

After getting the domain registered, I quickly ran to twitter and facebook to save the accounts there as well. I’ll have the .net placeholder site up soon with updates on the whole ordeal via this blog. Austin Apparel will be set up as a store-only, this will still be my main blog and any updates, sales, or events will be placed here. So yeah, this morning I got up early to work on a few projects when I decided to go ahead and whip up a logo. 10 minutes later you have what you see up at the top of this post. Knowing full well I love Helvetica and use it on like, 90% of my logos I just didn’t want to push it any more with American Apparel so I bit the bullet and bypassed it on my font list, instead opting for a more professional looking script font which seems to be making a comeback lately.

I plan to do a soft launch of the online store in May, and if its meant to be I’ll have a booth set up at Mineola’s Mayday festival, but that means I have a bit of stuff to save up for before then. I think I can do it though.

One thing I want to be clear is I am not setting up a custom shop. I am not set up nor intend to compete with local printshops who are far better equipped and set up for handling your 50pc family reunion t-shirt order. I will be doing averages of 50pcs per style in appropriate sizes, when those shirts sell out they will not be reprinted in that same manner. I will be both designing and printing the shirts myself. I may use the same logo but in different colors later or on a different color shirt, etc. but no shirt will be reprinted in the same way again. I will only be printing on organic cotton tees, bandanas, bags, etc. with plans to begin using American Apparel’s line of organic tees to begin with but will sample others as time goes on, starting with them because of their reputation and known quality. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll have more than just t-shirts.  I do want to be as environmentally friendly as possible, which is easy with waterbased inks yet a problem with discharge inks. While discharge is waterbased the bleaching agent used to “discharge” the cloth is not exactly the safest thing in the world (once it’s washed it’s totally safe as the agent washes away). So I cant make any “green” promises but its at least better than plastisol. So while the actual garment may be organic, the ink is what it is. Even my bud at OMUNKY has the same enviro-friendly standards, he even uses some tees made of recycled materials which is even cooler but not the rout I want to go.

Back in the fall the guys at work brought in some waterbased ink to test to see how well it would fare with higher-end garment printing. Scott and Ryan went out to Herwicks and picked up a few small jars of Permaset inks and proceeded to print a few sample bars and gradients to see how it cured, discharged, and printed overall. They were able to print the ink successfully on cotton, poly-blends, as well as full poly shirts (an A4 t-shirt, think of it as a cheaper version of Under Armour) without any problems. They did find out that you couldn’t discharge the ink out once you had printed it should they go an experimental rout with their designs.

As you know, this summer I plan on printing a small array of limited edition designs, mostly pigmented discharge on dark shirts. However, I recently looked into using darker inks on lighter and brighter shirts and looked back at the guys’ test of the Permaset ink. They still had a few jars of it laying around and let me take a few home to sample.  Permaset waterbased inks are very easy to use and pass very easily through the screen. I was using my 160 mesh screen with my various AustinTuners designs on it. Of course I tested them on some Isaac-sized t-shirts using a square foot of linolium sample I got at the hardware store for my pallet. I don’t have a press yet so I simply laid the screen down on the shirt directly. Also, because this is waterbased ink I had to be careful about keeping the screen flooded with ink while I was switching shirts or cleaning up a mess as the ink dries very very fast (much like acrylic paint)

Keeping an eye on the ink is the only issue when it comes to waterbased inks. Seriously, everything else is a total plus. Waterbased inks are water soluble so you can clean up with just water and shop towels. The ink dries quickly so you can actually let your shirts air dry before attempting to cure and not make a huge mess. Permaset inks in particular are not only waterbased but environmentally friendly, to clean my screen I just set my screen and squeegee in the shower and turned on the cold water. It’s ridiculously easy to clean up (given you don’t get it on clothes!) You can even zot-out the ink after curing!

So how does it turn out? Just look for yourself, remember that I am not even using a press or the right size squeegee for the artwork and just look how even and clean the design is. It looks like the shirt was dyed rather than printed.

I let the shirts dry overnight and brought them into work and threw them on the dryer. Our big dryers were set to 380 at I want to say about two minutes. Last time Scott tested the inks he noticed the shirts he ran though once washed out very slightly compared to the shirts he ran through the dryer twice (true with any ink) , so of course I threw the shirts back through the dryer a second time to cure. Remember that all apparel based inks require a curing time to make the ink set. The actual instructions say to use an iron to essentially heat press the ink and cure it. Next time I try the black I’ll use the iron and see how it goes.

Back to the shirts, I brought them home and threw them in the wash and what do you know, there is no difference in the ink at all. Still as bright as when I pulled them off the oven conveyor belt, no fading, no bleeding. The ink is so thin that it seeps into the shirt fibers giving you flawless cover. Since the ink is not a thick slab of plastic sitting on top of the fibers the ink wont ever crack like most industrial prints. Did I mention you can’t feel the print at all? Literally zero hand. If your going the indie printing rout and are wanting to print dark inks on light shirts I recommend this ink for sure.

I plan on ordering a few pints of colors, orange, a lighter blue, as well as a true red. The sample red (mid red) that Scott got was high in magenta and turns up very pink. I’ll be ordering the scarlet red next time I order ink. Only downside to these is that the color ranges are very simple. Of course if your doing this from your spare bedroom or garage I highly doubt your trying to match Pantones and each color they offer is a standard shade, they even offer shimmer inks that I hear are very good as well. If you want to mix exact colors they do offer a base that you can add any pigment to should you need this functionality. They also have a “supercover” ink that is supposed to work on dark shirts, so I will have to try that out as well and see how thick it feels.

Writing on t-shirts is nothing new, at work I constantly have orders with “2 inch oval” or “1 inch dot” in the middle of a design for players to write their name or number on. This is mainly used for practice shirts, shorts, and PE shirts. Anyone can take a sharpie to white plastisol for a permanent mark. So what happens when you want to wipe the ink off and write something else on the shirt?

Thats where EraserTees has come up with a fun way to make personalized t-shirts simple and fun. If you go to their site you see a plethora of deisgns that you would see on nomral t-shirts. Each design is set up so that you can write, draw, plan your day, whatever you want with no more than a waterbased marker.

So how did they do this? Their site says they came up with a fix to making a special ink that you could write on and wipe off much like a dry erase board. (in this case a wet-erase board as dry erase wont come off the shirt!) It seems they have bypassed this problem with something simple rather than something hard, heat pressed vinyl.

We use vinyl at work all the time for custom player names that would otherwise require half a dozen screens and wasted emulsion just for one pass on a jersey. I can see some t-shirt snobs putting their noses in the air about using vinyl rather than ink, but in this case its all about the functionality of the shirt that makes it so awesome. They do use a high end garment from Tutlex which some can compare to American Apparel. The best part about vinyl is that it doesn’t fade, crack or wash out like ink can and eventually does. In the end the shirt will wear out before the design does!

Of course the second I got my shirt out of the bag I went to testing it out. Sooo glad they included a marker for this! I was totally skeptical about the whole washing off process but much to my surprise it wiped off super easy. They said to make sure its totally dry before drawing on it again and for good reason because the marker is waterbased and the marker just wont stick! I was so excited when this actually worked.

So whats the outcome?

EraserTees

• Packaging: great.
• Labeling: standard.
• Design quality: super clean
• Ink quality: vinyl
• Price: Affordable @ 14.95

Whats even cooler is that this is all run by a couple of high school business teachers, You should definitely give these guys a shot!