A friend wants to create a tee shirt at one of the online makers.
Most of the places like Cafe Press and the like either screen print or do a simple decal and the result is something like this: a rectangular or square decal applied to the front of the shirt.
What she has in mind is more like this or this or this- something that is printed on the sleeves and sides as well and not just a decal.
Does anybody know what this type of tee-shirt design is called? Or where you can order one with your own design? (She knows it will be pricey.)
I just got some dye-sublimation tshirts from these guys. I’m not sure they can do images over the entire shirt like in your links, but you could check.
That said, I don’t think you can use sublimation for a dark-colored shirt like you show in the last two links. Because it works by dyeing the fabric itself, it needs to start with a light-colored base.
You’ll be looking at serious money to print like that.
The gold/metallic art is probably done with a heat transfer process, (remember the t-shirt shops with the big funny smelling hot press in nearly every mall in the 80s?) and the full-body flower shirt was made of fabric with the floral print already on it. That was not printed after the shirt was sewn together. That said, it may have been a custom short run printed fabric, which might be a pigment process or somewhat more likely, dye sublimation. Dye sub really only works OK on white or really, really light colors.
Custom or “on demand” printed fabric is usually in the $25-35 a yard range. Once the pattern is designed and proofed, the per yard costs don’t change a whole lot whether you get one yard or twenty.
The rainbow swirl is either a heat transfer or an insanely well done screen print. Hairline registration and blends are really hard to do in screen printing, so my guess without seeing the actual shirt is a heat transfer.
The three shirt-printing technologies are screen printing, inkjet and dye sub. Each has strengths and limitations. I worked with a company that sold the ink jet shirt printers and they could do some amazing stuff, but it can be hard to find a shop that has one and knows how to use it well.
Dye sub is almost an industrial-level process and I don’t know that many shops short of the Cafe Press level will have them, at least for retail, small-quantity buyers.
Some of the really high-art shirts use more than one process, as well. It can quickly get out of the range of the average person who 'wants a cool shirt like this one"…
get white dye-ready tee shirt fabric (from Dharma Trading Company or elsewhere),
trace a tee-shirt pattern onto the fabric,
dye/print/paint/draw on the fabric within the lines,
sew up the shirt after the pattern is set and washed.
You can do any number of techniques on this fabric: Stamps and fabric pens work pretty well, as does more intense stuff like screen print, batik with wax (crayons) and immersion dye.
I’ve done this a couple times. You can also get sewn dye-ready shirts from them and dye/paint/draw/print on them.
Most dye techniques take some practice to get good results. Fabric paints, stamps, and other drawing/painting type techniques are easier to control.
ArtsCow.com seems like they can do what you want. Here’s their page of shirts, and this one specifically says “The front, back, sleeves and even the neckline can be fully personalized by you to create the perfect t-shirt that you’ve always wanted.” It’s $24.99.
I’ve ordered from ArtsCow before, just not t-shirts. The quality is pretty nice, but items take forever since they’re coming from China. You might be able to pay for faster shipping.
