Case studies › 1974
Print, embroidery and relabelling for the fashion label 1974: and a pilling problem fixed by hand
A young designer from Nottingham is building a simple, stylish collection under the label 1974. He arrived with very little printing knowledge and a photo of a design he had once had printed. We like that kind of start, and this job also taught us something about jumpers.
The brief
A small but complicated order: embroidery, printing and relabelling, in several positions and colours, across a selection of different garments, mainly jumpers. There was no print-ready artwork, only the photo, so our design team recreated the logo, finding a matching font with a bold weight so the mark could be thicker than the original.
What we did
With the artwork sorted the print and embroidery went ahead and the order arrived on time, looking right. It was only on closer inspection that the client found a problem with the screen printed jumpers: pilling. Loose fibres on a knitted surface form small balls that can sit under a print, and when they shed they take flecks of print with them, leaving a speckled finish where it should be smooth.
That is a property of the garment, not of the print or the client. We had all the garments returned to the print house, touched up the imperfections by hand and shipped them back.
The result
The designer was happy with the corrected order and has returned since; we have now done two jobs for the label.
Pilling, and why it is not a print fault
A pill, or bobble, is a small ball of fibres that forms on cloth. It happens when washing and wearing loosen fibres at the surface and abrasion rolls them into bundles, most often at the collar, the cuffs and anywhere that rubs. The textile industry describes it in four stages: fuzz formation, entanglement, growth and wear-off.
It is a property of the garment and how it was made, not of the printing, and it is outside our control. The only way to avoid it before printing is to scrape every bobble off by hand, which on a production run is not realistic. Saying so before the order is the honest version of that conversation.
“I’ve just received the delivery, thanks for the quick turnaround. Thank you for replacing the previous faulty and missing items, along with changing tags.”
— 1974
At a glance
- Product
Jumpers and other garments: print, embroidery and relabelling - Technique
Screen printing and embroidery - Service
Logo recreated by our design team; relabelling - Sector
Fashion label - Where
Nottingham
The work, and how it was made
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