Technical Terms and Techniques

Words and explanations to do with embroidery and printing industry..

Embroidery

A design stitched onto a material through the use of high speed, computer controlled sewing machines. The design is reproduced with tightly stitched thread. Embroidery is most commonly used on logo patches and directly on some wearable s. Fine detail is difficult to achieve.

Bleed

Printers cannot print right to the edge of a sheet. To create that effect, the printer must use a sheet, which is larger than the document size. Then the printer prints beyond the edge of the document size (usually 3mm per side), then cuts the sheet down to the document size. Paper or plastic).

Flock Printing

A printing technique where the design is cut from a coloured foil then pressed onto the short under high heat.

Half Tones/Tints/Tones/Shades

Half tones are a pattern of tiny dots that stimulate different shades of colour using varying percentages of single ink. Visually, halftones create an illusion of a continuous tone image by using spots of varying sizes and density to represent darker or lighter colour values.

Fonts

Fonts are used to describe a complete typeset from a particular typeface, some examples of fonts are : Tahoma, Arial and Times new romans, there are plenty more.

Type Setting

Is to lay out words, text and logos to be places of garments for printing in exactly the right position, making the garment perfect and made with good quality also, making sure the garment has been made with time and patient.

Screen Printing/Silk Printing

Screen printing uses a fabric starched tightly over a frame. Ink is forced through the open parts of the screen onto the surface of the garment. A spate screen must be created for each colour to be printed and colours must be applied in passes allowing drying time between each.