Interesting Wares?

i should clarify just in case someone out there is interested in pursuing discharge shirts, they are still screen prints! im not an expert on shirts, but i did recently make my first discharge printed shirt and i learned a lot along the way and someone might find some of this helpful

not everyone who specializing in screen printing will offer it as an option but you'll be more or less sourcing it the same. the difference is instead of printing with a plastisol ink that sits on top, it uses a chemical ink that is more or less bleaching the shirt and/or replacing it with a new color (not exactly, but more or less). this results in a print that you cant "feel" as it has penetrated the actual cotton (you can however feel the print before its first wash--mine were this way when they arrived but resolve after washing, i think its just a leftover film).

there are some potential cons to the process, but depending on what youre going for they may not be a concern or may even be a pro. to my understanding its hard to get super vibrant colors, especially if your working on a dark shirt. the colors will trend more muted and "vintage" looking, which i personally love but may be a con for neon/bright enjoyers out there. a lot of furry shirts trend super bright colored, so this may be a reason why they dont use discharge printing. 

another con is that the exact same print using the exact same colors and the exact same shirt can vary slightly, and sometimes drastically, between shirts. this may happen because not all shirts are dyed equally. something shirt manus will do is if they have a color that hasnt sold (say a red shirt) they may dye them black after the fact to move them because black sells better. even if they didnt do this, the colors can still vary for one reason or another. my final shirts turned out slightly different from my sample, but for what i was going for it wasnt a big deal and most people wouldnt even be able to tell.

all of this is worth it to me for a shirt that wont crack, because even the best plastisol printed shirts Will eventually crack....and boy are they not all made equally.

there are things that can go wrong when making a screen printed shirt that will make it crack faster and worse than others. im no where near an expert on any printing processes, but one culprit may be heat transfer screen prints. theyre popular with print on demand/low quantity runs because you can stock a bunch of designs and then only apply to the shirts you sell. theyre plastisol ink, but theyre initially printed on a transfer paper (you'll typically order these online). from here theyre applied using a heat press to the shirt at a later date.

ive heard repeatedly that they can be temperamental and prone to cracking easier due to their increased variables. ive also heard they can be done 'right' and last longer, but still wont last as long as a traditional plastisol screen printed shirt because the ink tends to penetrate the fibers more, even if it's still sitting on top. im not sure how many furry shirts are made this way, but im sure some of them are. theres other types of transfers that are even worse.

there are lots of bad shirts out there, and as i said before, ive have enough shitty shirts in my lifetime lmao

edit: quick edit because i forgot to mention there is a price difference between plastisol inks and discharge inks. discharge screen printing typically costs more except when you are printing on a dark shirt. this is because when screen printing plastisol on a dark shirt, there usually is a ground ink that needs to be applied for the other colors to sit on top of, whereas the discharge ink doesnt need this.

its also worth noting that the reason gildans and other cheap shirts are used is because...well...they are cheap. and peoples budgets for a shirt typically have a pretty hard ceiling. transparently, i make less on each shirt than a lot of other people selling shirts out there. i would absolutely be making more money if i lowered my standards, but i want to be proud of the things i make, and i just dont have it in me to hand out shirts i myself cant stand or wouldnt wear