Our Process

Print

The sublimation process actually doesn’t even begin with fabric! It begins with paper, pressing paper specially formulated to transfer ink into fabric. The paper goes through a jumbo printer and gets coated in water-based ink, available in the widest range of achievable print colours. It then comes out the other side covered in the desired print and ready for a heat transfer.

Press

This second step in the process involves heat, and lots of it. The desired fabric and the now printed pressing paper get fed into a fancy pressing machine - essentially a rolling sandwich press - where 400 degrees fahrenheit of heat are applied to the points of contact. The result is that the dyes are transferred from the pressing paper directly onto the fabric. The fabric is now completely washable and 100% fade-proof.

Inspect

This final step is super important to us here at Art Fabrics. Step 3, the inspect step, is where we get to take a look at the finished product we’ve made and evaluate whether or not it’s up to our extremely high standards. When we inspect our printed fabrics, we’re doing so on your behalf, so we try to put ourselves in your shoes and determine whether it’s good enough for you. If it’s not acceptable, it doesn’t leave our factory. You can rest easy knowing that we evaluate every item we print as if it were for our own projects!

 

Disclaimer: Please note that due to a variety of monitor settings, the color swatches and your artwork, as seen on your monitor, may slightly vary from the actual printed color.

Understanding CMYK: When you create an image on your computer for printing it is normal to think that the colors seen on the screen will look the same when printed.  The issue is that the computer screen and many editing programs show colors in RGB mode, while images are printed in the CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) format. Sometimes the conversion from RGB to CMYK works without any problems, However in some cases, there will be noticeable differences between the shades of color. Our Full Color templates are provided in CMYK to help avoid any surprises with these shade differences.  However, please keep in mind, your monitor can still give you a slightly altered shading due to its RGB standards. RGB  has a greater range of colors than CMYK and can produce colors that are more vivid and vibrant. These colors are beyond the range of CMYK to reproduce and will come out a bit darker in print than what is seen on your monitor.