The shirt itself
A Gildan Heavy Cotton — 5.3 ounces per square yard of 100% US cotton,
spun at 20 singles. That is a thick shirt, and thick is the point. Heavy cotton takes
ink deep and holds the color through a commercial wash, which is what a shirt needs
when it lives in a kitchen, behind a bar, or on a food truck line in July.
Rib collar with the neck and shoulders taped, so it keeps its shape instead of
going wavy after a month of shifts. S through 5XL, and it is the same shirt all
the way up — nobody on your crew ends up in a different garment because of their size.
Eleven colors. The solids are all cotton. Sport Grey and the heathers carry a little
polyester, which is what gives them the flecked look up close.
- Fabric
- 5.3 oz, 100% US cotton, 20 singles
- Collar
- Classic rib, taped neck and shoulders
- Sizes
- S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL
- Print area
- Grows with the garment — a 5XL gets a bigger print than a small
Which color to put it on
Ink is not paint — it sits into the fabric rather than on top of it, so the shirt
underneath changes what you see. A light design reads loudest on the dark colors: black,
navy, forest, maroon. A design with fine detail or thin lines holds together better on the
lighter grounds, where there is less contrast fighting the linework.
The heathers are the one to think about twice. That flecked surface is two fiber types
taking ink at different rates, which softens a print slightly — lovely on a worn-in
looking logo, less ideal for a hard-edged wordmark. If you are unsure, tell us what the art
is for and we will say which of the eleven we would put it on.
Before any of it prints
Your artwork gets set on the shirt straight — squared up, level, and sized to
that garment rather than stretched to fill a box. If something in the file will not hold
at print size, we say so before it runs instead of after.
On a batch, we print one and look at it first. If the color sits differently on
that fabric than it did on screen, or the art is off by a hair, it gets fixed and then
the rest of the run goes. You are getting a person checking the first shirt, which is
the whole reason to have it made here.
Front