How to Sublimate a Shirt. Everything you need to know for sublimation on a shirt in 10 minutes.

hey guys we're going to switch gears a bit and we're going to talk about actually sublimation transfers i've been wanting to do a video on how to actually apply the sublimation transfers to a shirt and so i figured this is as good a time as any right okay so few things to know about sublimation okay sublimation is uh dye sublimation is basically just that you're dying fabric um with these uh sublimation transfers okay so one thing to be aware is sublimation does not print white so if you like you see this white right here that's going to be whatever color your shirt is okay so the other thing is you can't dye dark objects lighter you can only dye things darker so that's why it's important for sublimation to use a white or a very light colored shirt because if you put black on a black shirt you're not going to see it if you have pink on a black shirt you're not going to see it so you have to use light or or white as best but white or very light colored shirts as far as um a little bit darker colored shirts if you wanted to do like maybe a like a blue jean color or something like that you can do that but it's best to do that with an all black sublimation transfer black's one of the only colors that you can kind of still see on a darker shirt as long as it's not darker than the black so hopefully that answers some questions about that that's one of the biggest questions we get is why can't you do sublimation on dark shirts it's just because you can't see it so even if the the dye is transferring to it you won't see it on a dark shirt but you will see it on a white or a very light colored shirt the other thing to be aware of for sublimation is sublimation dyes only adhere to polyester fibers so what happens is when the dyes get heated up heat it up it actually infuses into the polyester so the more polyester content that you have in your shirt or um whatever you're pressing the brighter and bolder the colors are so if you have like a 50 polyester shirt with 50 cotton it's not gonna stick to the cotton but it will stick to the polyester so it'll be like a faded look so that's another thing to keep in mind the higher the polyester count in your fabric the brighter and bolder the colors will be another thing about sublimation is before you press it the colors are going to look really muted especially like blues and mints turquoise those colors will look completely different after you press it's weird so don't freak out whenever you print out your sublimation if you're doing it at home or even if you order one and it looks completely different it changes once it's heated it gets a lot more bolder brighter vivid and the blues and greens those change a lot so hopefully that answers a few questions okay oh another thing for sublimation you want to use a heat press or you can use the easy press 2 because you need 400 degrees fahrenheit and iron will not work unless you're doing like a little bitty tiny thing because you don't want to move it around at all when you press it you want to keep it like and not move it like it's got to stay still so easy press 2 will work because it does get hot enough or heat press is definitely definitely recommended iron and sublimation just do not mix okay so here are some other tips and tricks okay sublimation will go through your shirt okay so you always want to put something in between your shirt or you want to actually thread your shirt onto your press rather than just putting this on here like this pressing it because you're going to see this mama bear transfer all the way through to the back especially for thin shirts so anytime you're using sublimation you always want to protect your press with protective paper and then you always want to protect the inside of your shirt if you're not threading it through so for this one when i say threading it through i just mean opening the shirt and putting it on your press where only one layer of the shirt is on there that's always the ideal way to press if you can because then you don't have any seams messing you up or anything like that so this would be considered a threaded shirt all right so we're going to go ahead and put our shirt on here i'm going to move it to where the collar is not actually on the press anytime you're pressing it's always good to not have the collars or the seams on the press because anything like that can make it where your shirt isn't getting full pressure okay this is a bella canvas let me see this is a bella canvas shirt and it is i want to say 50 polyester 65 actually 65 polyester you want to have at least 50 but like i said the higher the polyester count the bolder and brighter these colors will be all right so we got our shirt on there we have our protective paper right now i'm just going to use this teflon sheet just to do a quick pre-press to get any moisture out of it all right remove that now here's another thing to be aware of for sublimation you'll notice that it's on this square okay now lighter colored shirts usually won't happen but if you're using like a more colored shirt a lot of times if you just put this down and you press it like that you're going to see that square so a good habit to always be in is anytime you're pressing sublimation just loosely cut around your image it just will soften that edge and just make it look a lot nicer another thing is if you're printing your own sublimations or ordering them sometimes whenever it's going through the printer you'll get little bitty dots of ink on the edge if you don't cut those edges off there's a chance that you won't see it and you'll miss it and you'll have like these weird little black lines okay and this does not have to be perfect this is just loosely cutting around so that you can really see where your image is and that you won't have that box around your sublimation okay um let me get one more thing one second okay okay another thing you always want to do before you're pressing a sublimation is use a lint roller and just get any loose fibers or anything like that off your shirt because sometimes if you have some loose fibers or anything like that you'll see these weird little blue and red marks after you press it because we're pressing for a for a full minute for sublimation so any of those little things getting pressed at 400 degrees for a minute can actually change colors and permanently affect your shirt and your outcome okay so we have our shirt ready we have it pre-pressed we have it lint rolled we have our transfer cut out our shirt is at least 50 polyester is 65 so we're gonna put the transfer face down okay so the ink side will be on the shirt now from here you don't want to put a teflon sheet straight on your transfer because what happens is once the ink um gets heated up and turns into a gas and any extra will kind of dissipate so if you use a teflon sheet that extra ink will just kind of sit on your teflon sheet and you'll need to clean your teflon sheet if not you won't notice it until you go to press something else and that ink will actually transfer onto something else so always use some protective paper you can even use um regular like copy paper is totally fine to just put on top okay so we're just gonna put a couple sheets of copy paper on there we're gonna take our teflon sheet and we're gonna cover it all with that okay and we're going to be pressing for 60 seconds at 400 degrees okay and y'all just be careful once this is done it will be hot so just be prepared for that okay once this is done you just want to remove your transfer immediately not let it move and then sit somewhere else or you get like a ghosting all right remove that and that is it so here is our sublimated shirt mama bear this particular design is available on the website as a digital download and it also is available as a ready to press transfer so that is sublimation is super easy it's not just for fabrics you can use it for any polyester coated item so there's tons like there's tumbler cups there's a whole bunch of stuff that you can use um sublimation for as far as washing this is permanent you can wash it and dry it like normal no issues and it will last a long time the other question i get a lot of times too is can you reuse the transfers they're not really made to be reused but sometimes like a darker transfer like this if you're okay with a much lighter version you can put it on there and press it again it won't be as bold and vibrant as the first one but you will still get some ink transfer but just be aware you know if you don't like it you can't take it off so definitely sublimation is permanent the amazing thing is sublimation it has no feel to it so all it does is it actually changes the color of the fabric so i hope this was helpful you guys we get so many questions about sublimation on the website you can order custom sublimations if you have an image that you want printed or if you have questions on how to print your own you're welcome to message us we can give you some recommendations of some good printers and good machines if you all have any questions please comment down below i will try to answer them as as best as i can to as best of my ability as i can but i hope this video was helpful i appreciate you guys watching don't forget to like and subscribe and i will see you all next time bye

Channel: Zindee

Views: 167,103

Rating: 4.9374604 out of 5

Keywords: sublimation, sublimating, how to sublimate, how to print a shirt, printing on a shirt, shirt sublimation, sublimation shirt, zindee, zindeezombie, crafting, tshirt, tshirt printing, printing shirts, shirt printing, using sublimation, how to sublimation, printing transfers, sublimation transfers, how to print, how to cut, how to press, heat press, sublimation easy press, sublimation problems, sublimation help, crafing, making shirts, make a shirt, mama bear, how to make a shirt

Id: o7vSoC2w_A0

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020