When the process is completed the right way with heat-treated washable ink, the design holds up to laundering without continual damage
I’ve had a lot of garments that have been professionally silk screened with pictures, logos or sayings, although I never truly stopped and understood the process. Silk screen printing works by crucial ink through a simple stencilled mesh screen and is popular for a wide range of applications, including all manner of canvases, posters, artwork, fabric and textiles. It can even be used on weird materials like wood, metal, plastic and glass. The process transfers a stencilled design onto a perfectly flat surface by way of ink and a squeegee. Once a stencil has been created, it’s actually possible to use just one or several shades of ink. Silk screening provides such vivid colors, even on darker fabrics, because the ink is applied in layers onto the flat surface of the material. It allows for a design to be entirely reproduced for you multiple times. The same stencil can be used over and over again, making it highly efficient for creating lots of copies of the same custom clothing. It’s often used for producing large orders of uniforms or garments for athletic teams. When the process is completed the right way with heat-treated washable ink, the design holds up to laundering without continual damage. One of the disadvantages of silk screen printing is the setup involved, and therefore, for smaller batches of printing, it is often more cost-effective to choose the method of direct to garment (DTG) digital printing. DTG digital printing is better for producing highly detailed designs however it really doesn’t offer the same intensity of color that screen printing provides.