Textile printing plays an important role in the field of fashion.

This process consists of adding color and design to a fabric to follow a certain trend, or adding a distinctive characteristic to a specific area of ​​a garment. Sometimes the printing of clothing is part of the hallmark of a specific brand, which makes its customers identify everything concerning the brand’s advertising.

The main characteristic to select a clothing print is the versatility of designs and techniques that can be used according to the sketch chosen by a particular brand or customer; where art, engineering and technology combine to produce, tints, logos and images that come from the designer’s imagination and creativity.

Textile printing initially refers to the printing of large quantities of fabric at an industrial level, which are used for decoration, such as furniture fabrics, sheets and others, which are used in interior decoration, along with different textures.

This gives rise to the printing of clothes, the purpose of which is to characterize a garment according to an established design, either by means of an image, advertising, the name or initials of a brand.

There are different types of stamping, which use different techniques depending on the stamping to be made.

Types of clothing print

  1. Direct printing (Direct printing) It is the type of color printing, which is done directly on the fabric, then dried, vaporized or heat-fixed.
  2. Corrosion printing of clothes (Discharge printing) It consists of stamping a design with a corroding paste on a previously dyed fabric, generally dark in color. This type of pigment contains oxidizing or reducing products that, when dried, produce a corrosion effect. The product used for this is stabilized sodium hydrosulfite, and it is generally in very light or white tones.
  3. Resist dyeing In this case, the design is first stamped with special pigmentation, and then the fabric is dyed. This pigment repels the colorant, so it does not set in the design and then the background color appears. This method can be done in an industrial or artisanal way.
  4. Sublimation stamping or transfer This technique consists of using an inkjet printer to print a design on a special sheet of paper. This is placed on the material to be printed, which generally must be polyester or have a composition of at least 2/3 polyester, which is heated with an iron, and the temperature causes the printing of the sheet to gasify and move onto the fabric.

This method of printing clothes by sublimation has a series of special characteristics to take into account, such as:

  1. Garment print by transfer It is basically a decal that is fixed to a fabric, using heat and pressure. To make this type of printing, a printer with special colored inks is used, which are adhered to a paper with specific characteristics, called “transfer paper” and a printable material, which is recommended to be cotton, so that it has a maximum durability.
  2. Silk-screen printing of clothes This is the most popular printing system, which begins with the selection of a design to be printed, and is then printed on a photolith (acetate or transparent film), then transferred to a fabric mesh stretched over a frame or rack called a screen.

Using screen printing carries a series of advantages such as:

Both screen printing and sublimation are two of the most widely used processes for printing clothes, as they have a very high resistance to washing and maximum durability.

In Medellín there is a company with a long history in the textile industry called CI EL GLOBO S.A.S which offers a wide market of services in the field of fashion; clothing printing is part of the portfolio of products and ideas of new creatives, to meet the needs of consumers.