A Digital Printing Network
What to use on a fleece type material
A customer wants us to put phrases (text) on a blanket. She described it as being like sweatshirt material so I am thinking fleece. Embroidery would be too expensive I'm sure since they want about twenty sentences. We could use DTG but I'm not sure it would hold up well anyway. A heat transfer material is what I'm leaning toward but why type? What I'm most worried about is weeding all this text and making it hold up.
Tags: DTG, Embroidery, Fleece, Heat, transfer
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mabuzi on -
The biggest issue with fleece is the mark left behind by the heat press after either DTG or heat transfer. DTG is cotton mainly and will probably wil not work to well with text. The transfers are going to be the best option but all that weeding!
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Permalink Reply by Butch on -
We did several fleece throws for Christmas last year. We used Stahls thermo film and had good results. Most of the items were personalized with a script font I believe it was one of the shells fonts, local school team logos etc. All turned out well. The only problem is when they were washed the area of the print would wrinkle a bit. This was remedied by ironing the back with a hand iron.
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Permalink Reply by Kathy MacMannis on -
We do a lot of polar fleece blankets and use the spectra eco film. Weeding will stink, but just make sure that you are charging for all of that time, or better yet find one of your workers 9 year old, they think weeding is fun :-) Ohhhhh did I say child labor??? I meant they are 19!
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Permalink Reply by Ken Wagner on -
Charging for your time is always the problem. No one expects to pay for labor any more. I had thought about grouping some of the sentences they want and trying to put them on a color background as close to the blanket color as I can. This would eliminate the weeding issue and while not the prettiest of solutions it will be much cheaper for them. We have done this with some other hard to weed items with fair results. It all depends on your customers expectations I suppose.
I've never used the Spectra film and really hate the thought of buying another heat transfer material. It seems every time I turn around another specialty material pops up. I guess that's the price we pay for trying to please the customer.
Kathy - You have any spare nephews or nieces that want to make some candy money? ;-)
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Permalink Reply by irving donaldson on -
With fleece depending on the knapp - you have to worry about the fibers poking through or it raising. I use flock, which can keep the knapp surpress and provides good adhesion.
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Permalink Reply by Roland R. Irish III on -
Embroidery isn't going to cost that much...because it can be 1/4" high letters and still be legible. And the smaller the letter, the less dense the stitches, resulting in lower stitch count and less cost. Also, if the embroidery shop uses speed frames, the labor for hooping is almost nil. We just sold our AMAYA embroidery machine and I had done many 'fleece' blankets with it, some with the nylon outer layer, with a 'zipper' hidden in the edge so you embroider only one layer.
Cost was minimal because there isn't that many stitches...believe me...compare the cost of embroidery against your cost for the heat transfer material and how the customer is going to feel about the quality difference. YOU have to learn to convince customers that 'cheap' or 'low cost' isn't always the solution-and if they WANT something complex-THEY are going to have to pay for it! I had NO problem telling customers that what they 'thought' would be a $3.00 embroidery charge would be $10 or even higher-and they ALWAYS paid it. And, we had (industry standard) a $5 bare bones minimum charge for ANY embroidery charge to begin with.
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Permalink Reply by Ken Wagner on
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One thing I failed to mention. They want about 20 sentences on this blanket. That's why I hesitated to suggest embroidery. The cost could be $100 or more and they want two of them. These are high school kids doing something for their coaches so money will be an issue. I agree sewn items look very nice and have a rich look to them. Will everyone be willing to pay for that look? Some do without batting an eye but many look at you like you've lost your mind.
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Permalink Reply by Roland R. Irish III on
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Who have you contacted for embroidery cost or do you offer it? That sounds like an extremely high price...if there is no digitizing, no logo, just straight type-it shouldn't be that much. The blanket itself isn't going to be more than $25 or so...and is it possible to work with the students to cut the total verbiage down to 'short, sweet, and to the point'? After all...who is really going to sit there and read a blanket like a Kindle?
If I still had the program here for setting the type for embroidery and knew what you wanted I could give you a quick estimate. But it shouldn't cost more than 25-50¢ max per thousand stitches....if you need a source for shops with the Amaya machines (best one on the market for something like this) let me know!
Roland
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Permalink Reply by Ken Wagner on
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We have an Amaya and do our own digitizing. I was guesstimating the cost just for an example. When you say it should cost no more than 25-50 cents max. is this your cost or what you charge your customers? We normally tell them we charge $1 per thousand stitches. Do you have a minimum set up charge as well?
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Permalink Reply by Roland R. Irish III on
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Ah! You have one of them! Aren't they great?
For 'small jobs' and stuff we would get $1.50 per thousand and/or $10 minimum charge.
Then the bigger the job got or more quantity, the price would drop. Name drop on a shirt, customer supplied, $10- we supply shirt, $4.50 and so on.
I did a 'baptism' robe for a church-one sewout, around 50k stitches and it took days to get their design right...and they happily paid $150 dollars since competition had quoted $250 just to digitize.
Now, for your job-since it is all type (as you say) then you have no digitizing...just pick a good font-stay AWAY from cursive and serif type fonts...no matter what the customer thinks they want-on fleece it isn't going to look good. Type size .25 to start with, and start typing...density to start 5.5 and NO additional underlayment. Let Designshop handle that automatically. You may even need to step up to density of 6 or more if you have to go to .20 to get everything in.
Without knowing how many words per sentence I can't suggest a hoop size...BUT maybe if you have the speed frame (clamp system) you can convince them that what they want to say MUST fit into the boundaries of your hoop system AND stay at .20 letter size minimum. Can't fit-then they must edit.
Otherwise, if the stitching is going to run $100 or more (and I can't see it doing that) then you are actually going to save everyone a lot of grief and money by just setting up a one color screen frame and screenprinting it...on smooth fleece you can easily handle .15 size type, helvetica or similar...two imprints (2 blankets) and I would do that for about $75 complete...my minimum screenprinting charge including screen.
Good luck! Sounds like the customer is asking for a lot more than it is going to be feasible to do!
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Permalink Reply by Ken Wagner on
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We love the Amaya, runs great with little down time.
The more I look at this job the less I like it. Even limiting the wording they want would make it pricey. Then if you do random areas on the blanket you have all the backing swatches that will make it look like a patchwork quilt. We don't do screen printing only DTG and the Roland heat press. But even if we did I'd think it would still be pricey to do just two blankets. I think we'll pass on this one for now. Thanks everyone for their input.
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