How to Sublimate a Shirt - Sublimation Transfer Tips

hi guys Debbie here I'm just getting ready to do a shirt and I've had a lot of people asking for tutorials on sublimation and so I thought this would be a good chance to show you how to press a sublimation transfer on a t-shirt or tank top or for the most part any fabrics but the t-shirts seem to be kind of the trickier ones and there's a few little tricks that I've learned they make it a little easier so we're gonna start on the computer just to show you some print settings and how to set it up and and then we'll go from there okay so we're starting on the computer and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to open up a new document and show you right from beginning on how to set it up in case this is the very first time you're printing a transfer I use silhouettes to do so there'd be a whole different set of steps if you're wanting to promote different software but basically when you open it chances are it's going to look like this with your mat they're probably not that so you open it up and it's gonna look like this what we want to do is drag in the design so I'm doing a buffalo plaid mama bear tank top and I want the ping file so if it'll load and tell me what that is well I'm thinking this one yeah so the ping files have transparent backgrounds and that's ideal that there's usually JPEGs available too but the white background sometimes can be a different color and you don't even realize it just barely tint in a different color and then it'll it'll print with a different color so the transparent backgrounds are really the ones that you want and they should be a minimum resolution of 300 dpi which is dots per inch and that's the resolution anything less than that I mean 240 is probably okay but less than that you're going to start to see a pretty big reduction in quality but you just drag the design right into silhouette studio and then you want to set it up to print because we're not cut so this when I do these tank tops I've done enough of them that I do them all 11 inches wide so if you come over here to the transform panel and then this little diagonal arrow looking thing it'll let you select on the graphic and then change the size so you hit the little lock aspect ratio and you change the width to 11 inches and then we can want to go back to the page setup I'm gonna turn the cutting mat off I mean it really is a big deal if it's on but it just bugs me and then we're gonna turn the cut border off but show print order is a big deal because you'll it's gonna tell you if it's gonna print like right now if I printed this see the line the this stuff outside that border won't print even if your paper has plenty of space it will not print if it's outside that border so the border is going to tell you if you've got some sort of print settings that are not set up the way that you want now so this is 11 inches wide I need to do it on 13 by 19 sheet of papers so that it does the whole thing because in 8 and a half by 11 there's the print border goes in just a little bit and so I can't actually make it the full 11 and I actually wanted to show you how to print on a scrap anyway so we're gonna set it up for a 13 by 19 I uh 13 by 19 and 8 and 1/2 by 11 sublimation paper that's the only sizes that I buy I just haven't had the need to get anything in between but there's there's lots of different sizes that you can get but set it to 13 by 19 and then we want to fix this border right here so we're not gonna print it yet but go up to file print and make sure you choose your printer so I have the WUF 77 20 and then you go into preferences and I have pre-set saved so I can just come in here and click on 13 by 19 and it'll have everything that I want but I'll walk you through how to do it so I always print out a paper cassette one just because the settings that I use aren't available on paper cassette to the premium presentation mat if I was if I change this to number two I went to the type the premium presentation mat isn't an option so I put it on cassette one I choose the paper size so 13 by 19 I do it portrait but obviously you can change that to whatever you need and then you go to your paper type and go premium presentation paper mat and then go into quality and hit hi and I think that's it for this tab the borderless I don't turn on one it pops up with a warning and says that the quality might not be as good are on the edges but the issue that I've run into is the sizing tends to be off a little bit and I do print and cut sometimes or I do it alongside vinyl and I want to make sure that it's exactly the size that it should be and when I print borderless it seems to stretch it or something so I keep order less turned off so that's why there's this little line here that doesn't go all the way to the edge of the paper and why I'm doing this on a bigger sheets which I can obviously shrink shrink it down a little bit more but I'm just showing you this way anything so second tab this this document size is going to just automatically match what you had on the first tab color correction you want to go into advanced and hit ICM that's like the internal color profile for the printer itself so it's just the default it's gonna let it use the settings that Epson has set for the printer without having any special changes being made by the software so turn on ICM and then down here turn off high-speed and turn on mirror image by turning on mirror image it's going to automatically mirror it for you so you don't have to do it you never have to worry about forgetting to mirror and with sublimation it needs to be mirrored because you put the design face down onto whatever you're putting it on and so if you don't wear it everything will be backwards so highly suggest clicking that and saving a preset so the preset you can come in here at remove presets and once you have everything set on that screen you could just give it a name and hit save I already have some in here but then that just makes life a lot easier for you so thirteen by nineteen Kosmos that's the ink that I use I did have different ink and so I started saving with Cosmo so I know which ink because some of the settings were different with different inks so if you don't use Kosmos ink do some tests Walmart has fabric for a dollar ninety-nine a yard hundred percent polyester I've done hundreds hundreds and hundreds of tests compare and write it down very carefully and figure out what setting works better best for your ink but for the cosmos this was definitely the best for shirts now I changed up a little bit for mugs but fabrics and stuff the premium presentation met so anyway you hit OK when you hit apply but then you hit cancel don't hit print yet so hit cancel and if you look you see that the print border changed that's what you need to look for if you did something wrong in those settings and that print border isn't lining up like this you need to go back and look at them again this is basically the print border is going to tell you if something's messed up and it happens so I highly suggest turning that on so we have the design and I'm just gonna go all the way up see zoom in just inch it up to the edge here and because I'm kind of OCD we're gonna hit the center button so that it just makes placement easier when you're doing the shirt so I'm centering it and there it's good that's how I want it so we're gonna go back to file and print and hit print except I'm going to show you how to set up the printer first then I'll hit print okay now we need to set up the printer to make sure that it's doing what it should in order be printing the right thing with the computer is gonna be sending it so by default the tray is all closed up so you need to since we're doing the bigger sheet of paper pull it out there's a blue tab over here pull the tab and it'll let me extend the whole thing out and you need to have this one pushed back and this one pushed all the way back so you have the full tray size for the 1319 paper if you're using a different size just look at the lines on here and line them up accordingly now I'm not actually gonna put 13 by 19 in here because I am going to print on a scrap because a lot of people have asked me that so we're dual purposing this little this is 13 inches wide but I cut it off I was probably a pillow I have a lot of squares we're gonna pull off the side there's kind of so I'm gonna use a scrap and you just push it all the way up where the paper would be and you make sure your design is up on the top and paper so prints first and then the rest of its blank the printer will just push it out this blank there's nothing that's trying to do there just make sure there's no design that's going to go down beyond where there's no paper and I'm using a sub paper I get it on Amazon it works great and there's a pattern on the back so you want to print on the white side so you put it facedown you should see the pattern then you know you have it loaded right then push it in and you need to tell the printer what size you're loading don't tell them into scrap just put 13 by 19 in here so 13 my 19 is actually called Super Bee or a 3 plus so for paper size you choose that and for paper type you choose premium matte and it's actually working up on my screen and I have it saved as a paper favorite paper setting if you want to save it go into favorite paper settings choose which setting number you want and then you'd hit edit and go in and choose everything and then hit safe but I already have mine all sorts I'm not going to do that but I choose super be premium Matt okay use and they'll pull those settings in and you get close and you're good to go hold this out because otherwise it goes flying across the room I have my printer up on a big tall dresser it's the only place I have room for this giant printer but pull this out and then it'll catch it for you there's a little on the lid that comes with these I took them off the first day I started printing it's it's not necessary and it was just driving me nuts having to take a lid and put it back off so I keep the lid off all that out go over to either printer and hit print okay so the transfers printed what I like to do now I know I censored it on the page so I'm not really gonna worry about the left and right side but just to show you guys I usually cut it out as close to the design as possible so it's easier to line up on the shirt and I mean you can kind of see through the paper a little bit but sometimes it's just a little bit tricky so just for helping replacement I'm gonna cut off the extra on the bottom just so it doesn't kind of mess with my linemen so what I usually try to do is see the space that I have over here and match it over here with whatever is the lowest part so something like that and I just cut it I try not to put my ruler over that so I don't scratch the transfer itself and like I said I centered it in the software so I'm not gonna worry about trimming the right in the left but if it wasn't centered I would trim both sides too okay so one more thing you wanted to mention real quick make sure that you lint roller your shirt really well there's lint that gets on it in the factory or shipping or whatever and you can't even see it but it will show up blue when you press it and it's bad so lint brush lint roller to the front roll over the back go through a few sheets if you have to just to be extra careful that you don't get any of those little blue flecks on there and one more thing I just thought about the butt transfers I cut mine in squares like I showed you if you still have issues with the square of the paper showing up on the shirt you can try tearing the design out and it gives you kind of more of a feathered line that's a lot less noticeable on a shirt I haven't had to do that honestly I don't like doing that because I feel like I can't get it lined up as well and I got my pressure settings I'm Torri I don't have that problem but if you still have that problem try the tearing out thing that seems to work really well for people as far as the alignment I've heard some people will take a ruler or square and put like a plus sign or a big T on the back of the transfer really lightly in pencil so when you tear it you at least know how to get it level of where the center is but again I don't have to do that the foam kind of solve the problem for me but if you still have that issue that's just an idea if we're gonna try okay so now we can move on to the actual shirt process I do all my shirts and fabrics for the most part 400 degrees for 60 seconds I highly suggest checking the temperature of your press this beast for example is like 25 degrees too hot so I have all these little notes written on a piece of paper on the wall to get it to 400 days I have to set it to 377 so don't be confused by that you need it to be 400 degrees but little infrared thermometer works great make sure your platen is bare if you have tough long on the top it won't I won't read it correctly and you just aim it and press the button so it says 396 $3.99 so it just kind of depends this one is so big and it honestly it's a China piece of crap but it gets the job done but depending on where you shoot the thermometer on the Platinum the temperature is going to be a little bit different here and there but this one it was 399 right in the middle so we're gonna go with that now I use foam for all my shirts I have a couple different sizes I have a whole stack of them I just cut them with scissors I got this on Amazon I think I've heard Joanne's I mean really any craft store should have some foam but the foam gives it a nice soft backing so that you can get even pressure without having to do super high pressure and it helps allow for seams and stuff like that now even with paper underneath I have I've stained all of them just the ink that bleeds through some some things are worse than others this is from black sequin pillow and I had a sheet of butcher paper underneath and it still did that so now I always make sure that I kind of press it for a little bit to try to get as much ink off of it as I can and then I always put paper underneath if for no other reason than to protect what you're pressing so for this this little foam pad is big enough to cover the whole design so I'm going to use the smaller one because then I can leave the the seems to be off of the pad and then the shirt doesn't get quite so smashed sometimes you can see the back part of the tank top pressed into the front part of the tank top and so the smaller one works better but I just wanted to show you I have a full-size one sequined pillows I do on this this full one regular pillowcases waffle weave towels pretty much everything else goes on this bigger one and I never adjust the pressure on this press and they never changed the temperature I have another heat press that is a swing-away it's a lot easier to tweak the pressure on it this one is just a little bit I mean I had to add washers to the front part so that it would allow room and still be level with a foam pad so long story short I would recommend getting a nice he press but this works it's a sixteen by twenty four and I wanted the biggest one that I can afford and this is what it was but anyway so I'm going to take this one off it never press without this because this is pretty much those presses all just I use fabrics and so I always use with the foam pads so what you want to do first is get some butcher paper to go on the bottom I'm sorry you've seen my back but this is a big giant roll but your paper that I got from Sam's Club it's like I think I was like twenty bucks a piece that's big enough to cover the whole bottom platen and you can reuse this I got ink on the last one so I threw it away but I'm gonna pull this forward a little bit just so the top tank top strap can drop back there past the phone and put the phone down cover the top to protect the shirt itself so I have to then weigh the very first thing I do is I pre-press the shirt it gets out any initial moisture so I'm gonna take the tank top try not to burn your knuckles I really do like my swing away if you can afford a really big spoon or I get a swing away but this works so I'm just pushing this down so my seams I know you can't see this but right here is the edge of the foam so these seams from the tank top or not above it so they're not going to get smashed by the press nobody take butcher paper I put it over it and they just press it for a second whoa not a second but a few seconds then I pull it out and set it aside and I spray spray adhesive on the transfer now if there's I'm a little bit of a learning curve with this so I'm gonna show you how to do it this is my super high tech adhesive spring box I just use it over and over again I put it like this on the bottom and so what I'm not using it I just fold it back up and tuck at the bar get my kids labeled it sticky box so anyway put the transfer inside the box and this is the spray adhesive that I have found it works the best please for me I know that Conde sells a spray but their shipping was outrageous this was like 20 bucks at Michaels but you can use to 40% off coupon code so it makes it a little bit more reasonable but the trick is one use the box then you could be a little bit more flowy with it not worry about making a mess not to be as careful but there's a little black mark on the lid make sure it's aimed that way and it will get gummy after every time you use it so I take an alcohol swab which I keep a bunch of them on my windowsill here and clean that tip so that it sprays a nice fine mist if you don't clean that tip you don't have it aimed right it'll start to kind of drip and those drips will wreck your transfer so you can actually see it and know before you press it if you wrecked it and I've done it and I didn't clean it because there was only ten minutes since I sprayed the last one and it messed up so I am clean the tip I have the transfer inside the box I usually will shake it up I usually do a little test spray just on the side to make sure I'm getting a nice good mist and then you just kind of make a cloud inside see you could see the fog I probably should have the window open but the kids are outside playing being loud and so it's like a hundred degrees in here but that's all I do for spring so you pull it out and look at it if there's drips on the design those drips will show up when you press it so look at it and make sure that everything looks like it's got a nice fine mist before you waste a shirt cuz it happens I've done it just something to keep in mind so I'm moving the sticky box and not sure how well you can see this here okay so we're going back to the shirt so we pre pressed it it's sitting here looking all pretty quick thing about sizing I have yet to find some cheat sheet size chart that just tells you what size to make the transfer I measure every single one and just kind of get an idea so I thermometer over here I look at thermometer ruler I look at my ruler I might do this 11 inches I've already done this for I'm showing you I lay down on the shirt and I see where 11 inches would hit and no it's you know probably five inches tall and just kind of eyeball it and that's how I decide what size to make it but then I save it so I don't have to think that through every time I do a shirt so um there's a hair anyway so take your nice sticky adhesive transfer and I'm so I'm I'm big on eyeballing if you want to fold the shirt in half to get like a center line and put a careful crease whatever rulers t-squares there's all kinds of tricks but I just eyeball it and another reason why it's kind of nice to keep the extra edges on there's less gap on the side so it's a little bit easier to line up but I usually go a couple inches down from the neck of the shirt and I look up here these corners so it looks even and then I look at it from top to bottom okay I really don't like picking that up once I put it down but the shirts actually going to my sister-in-law and I don't want to mess it up so okay that looks good too so here's here's the really important parts that'll keep you from messing up a shirt you got to put paper inside the shirt on top of the shirt and under the shirt because it could depending on the design the ink can bleed through the shirt onto the back and I actually like to try to save these big pieces so I put paper underneath it as well so the paint doesn't give on this big sheet I have a stack of legal paper and regular letter size copy paper and that's what I use oh we're gonna cuz it's cheap and it's easy and I don't have to cut it so I take my legal paper and I put one on the press where the design is going to be I've kind of move it around as I need to I put one inside the shirt so this is another reason why I really like the spray adhesive is it'll stay put while you kind of mess around with it and you can line it up on the table and move it to the press when you're done it just it stays where you needed to there is adhesive tape high heat tape but I this big press creates like a suction every time I open it and even with the tape I couldn't get it to not move a little bit and once I got the spray adhesive down I'm sold okay so I can actually feel the paper through the shirt and we can pick it up and sometimes see it a little bit better but you just want to make sure that the paper is covering up so you don't send it through to the back cuz I've done that and then I get it as flat as I can and I grab you could feel the paper on the inside and the paper on top I just grab both and I pick it up and they move it over here to the press which I hate this part constantly fumbling the only for that foam again trying to get this stuff not getting smushed but make sure that the foam is underneath your whole design because otherwise it won't press you need to have good good contact okay then legal paper over the top so it saves this big giant piece of paper I just don't want to waste any more paper than have to cover the whole thing now remember 400 degrees 60 seconds but depending on your shirt you might want to you know you might have to adjust that a little bit but I've done the shirt I did this exact one yesterday so I know that this works so cover the whole thing the paper just kind of helps protect the shirt a little bit if you have a really shiny polyester shirt you could put two or three sheets of butcher paper on there it can help it a little bit but this press has a timer built in on it you just close it and starts counting but one last thing before I put it down I have a lint roller handy and you'll see why okay so now we're going to press it okay lift it slowly because it's it's gonna want to try to suck your paper up and make a big mess pull off and don't panic here you're not in a hurry do this carefully it's okay if it sits on here for a second even if you wanted to let it cool you don't have to like being a panic to rip it off so I'm gonna pull this off recycle bin the recycle bin gets filled up like every day okay so peeling this is important now I know we have spray adhesive but if for some reason you don't get enough on there or whatever it can still shift so just be careful in every step of the way when doing shirts I put my hand now it's hot but it's not - I actually my fingernails I can use my fingernail so I don't burn my fingers but I hold it a little bit in place while I grabbed the corner with my finger and then I peel it it just makes sure it doesn't shift while you're doing it um right when you get it out and pull it off I pull the paper out now I should have done this faster but again this is a really forgiving shirt some shirts are not as forgiving but while it's hot lint roller the crap out of it so this one like I said I've got the pressure down really good in this shirt stupid boy this shirt is is really forgiving that's why I like doing these ones so much but white especially it just seems to be harder but if you lit roller it really well and I'll do a video on towels that's where you see the biggest difference of towels but it helps lift up those fibers while it's hot so that they're not so melted down and then shake it out really good and that helps to but really this shirt this one is so easy this is a thread fast Apparel blizzard tank this is silver and down here is white blizzard they're my favorite super easy to do but anyway Oh turn this press off that's it and look at how good those colors look so I've done tests on all the the paper settings and stuff and the premium presentation Matt rocks now of the Kosmos ink rocks - so that helps I used to use a different brand and I won't name it because there's some people who love it but the blacks were kind of blue and the colors were just kind of randomly off some would be awesome and some wouldn't be so awesome so anyway um that's it beginning to end on how to sublimate a t-shirt just don't rush through it and practice but there's just a lot of little steps and I've I've wrecked all of them missed paper underneath missed part of the platen and so the design was cut off that's why I went for a really big press because it makes life easier in that aspect but but that's it and it's right than the fibers of the shirt it's smooth you know it just works awesome this was actually an SVG file and I went through and made some versions with buffalo plaid and I got like a grunge one or something and I can get links to all of those feel free to ask I can get you links for the tank tops the paper the ink any of it so let me know if you have any questions and hopefully you this helps some of you thanks [Music] you

Channel: Debbie Does Design

Views: 652,069

Rating: 4.7468119 out of 5

Keywords: sublimation, sublimate, sublimation shirt, sublimation settings, sublimation tips, sublimation help, sublimation transfer, sublimation how to, how to sublimate, how to do sublimation, sublimation fabric, sublimation vivid, sublimation press, sublimation press lines, sublimation adhesive spray, sublimation shirt times, sublimation press marks, cosmos ink, epson sublimation, wf-7720, wf-7710

Id: vfZ0HP2E1Pk

Length: 34min 26sec (2066 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2019