Here is some backround information on the process called print sublimation that I used to apply my designs on 100% polyester T-shirts and other novelty items:
What is print sublimation Click here for more information—>Download file
Sublimation uses a patented heat transfer process that employs special heat sensitive inks or toners to permanently dye polymer-coated surfaces. Simply print your clip art, scanned images, or computer created artwork on an inkjet or laser printer using high-quality paper and sublimation inks or toners. The resulting transfer sheet can be applied to a variety of surfaces with a standard heat press.
How is a sublimation transfer different from direct printing onto fabric/screen printing?
Heat transfers created with color laser, ink jet, or wax thermal printers use a polymer coated transfer paper to fuse ordinary toner or ink particles onto the surface of a substrate. The result is a “decal-like” transfer that can peel, crack, fade, and discolor over time. Sublimation transfers instead rely on special transfer inks or toners to transfer below the surface of a substrate. The result is a “tattoo-like” transfer that will not peel, crack, or fade and lasts for many years.
My Reflection:
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process of designing my grahpics to the end product of print sublimating them onto t-shirts, keychains and even mousepads! You can view it by clicking this Link—> Vicki’s T’s There is endless posssiblities, tonal designs and photographs transfer beautifully and the designs fuse with the fabric fibers and are incredibly soft. They are not stiff like screen prints and don’t crack like they do. You can view a display of my T-shirts on display on the 3rd floor of Caudell Hall that will be up until the end of the semester. If you are interested in using the print sublimation press please contact professor Elaine Polvinen, for obtaining the press would not have been possible if it was not for her!
99% of my designs I had hand drawn with sharpie markers and scanned them in and manipulated them. I felt I could not have achieved my desired artistic effect if i would have created them in Adobe Illustrator. Sometimes the artistic free hand is the most beautiful and I believe the most original. That is why my future electronic investment would be in a Wacom pen tablet. They are very popular and helpful in digitizing freehand designs and when I had interned last summer in NYC, that’s what their designers used, they are becoming very common in the industry.
Thank you to all who have read my blogs, had commented or not, if it is one thing I leave fashion and textile technology students here at Buffalo State, it is this, Fashion is the utmost expression of oneself. Be true to yourself. The saddest thing I can see is a girl walking around with a $99.00 Coach change purse and wonder if (1)she bought that to obtain some sort of respect to fufill her insecurities, (2) Her friends had it, everyone has it and she wanted it too to be fashionable/trendy, or that (3) she actually bought it because she loved the design and detail and it fully expressed her individual fashion and self. With mass consumerism in America, most likely it is (1) or (2) but for all the girls who buy like (3), my utmost respect is for you, who value individuality and originality, embrace that, for you are the beholder of truth.
“Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.”- Pablo Picasso
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