Print Your Designs On Fabric
We are a fabric printing company where you can create your own fabric. Printing your own fabric is our service. Have your own pattern, illustrations, or textile designs custom printed in a matter of days. Our digital fabric printing system will allow full width roll printing or just one off custom sized panels printed on a wide variety of fabrics.
Sample A5 Textile Prints Of Your Design
You can get your own sample printed which is ideal for seeing and feeling the quality before you commit. Print your image on your choice of textile from our wide range of specialist fabrics. Select the material, and upload the design for an A5 print on one fabric or several textiles from our range.
For test print samples click here.
Homeware Custom Textile Printing
Customised textile printing is ideal for the creative homemaker to print wall hangings, drapes, and home prints. Our digital fabric printing is perfect for the professionals who needs a short run, for a one off set design, or a retail space textile drape. We can produce with fire-rated fabric too.
Fabric Printing And Fast
All our fabrics are tested to be excellent for printing with dye sublimation. You can set your design area to your own dimensions per textile. Choose the correct textile for you from our range. Test prints on our textile range are available starting from an A5 print of your graphic. Print your own A5 sample.
Grain Direction For When You Plan Your Fabric Print
We print your artwork in the orientation that you design in our online preview. Imagine the preview is a roll of fabric running from top to bottom, the width of the roll is left to right. This is especially important for fabric destined to become clothing as the stretch on our jerseys runs across the width of the roll. If you make the width wider than the fabric selected, we rotate by 90° in order to fit it on the roll so planning your grain direction can be important.
How Would you Like the Edge?
We have four finishing options for your fabric order:
As it comes - We cut around your image, leaving a simply scissor cut, perhaps uneven white fabric border.
Hem with thread - We can hem your fabric with a choice of black or white thread. Please allow 1-2 days additional production time. See below for information on how hemming affects the size of your print. We offer either a folded hem (single or two fold dependant on the fabric) which uses a straight stitch, and an overlock hem which stitches over the edge of your material. Some fabrics will work better with one particular hem type and won't be compatible with the other - for those you will only be given the suitable option. If you see both options, then it's down to you which you would prefer.
Cut on the line - We will cut neatly on the edge of your image. Please be aware, when we cut along the line, we have to cut against the grain of the fabric. This is the standard procedure for fabric cutting. This means that with some fabrics, for example: Georgette and Mulmul which have a slight wave in them, some fraying will occur. This is unavoidable as the cut follows the grain of the textile.
All of our fabrics are cut manually by hand with the utmost care and attention. If your fabric has a slightly uneven look on the edges, or a touch of fraying, this does not indicate a flaw in the textile. It is not always possible to achieve a perfect straight cut with certain fabrics, so please do bare this in mind when it comes to your design. If you have any queries or would like to know about our cutting methods in more detail, please get in touch and we will be more than happy to discuss them with you.
Printing on Natural Fabrics
Please be aware that when printing on 100% natural fabrics, colours will appear slightly muted creating an authentic 'washed out' look. Colours and details still print exquisitely but due to the natural fibres, they are less intense than poly or poly-blends. We suggest increasing the contrast of your image, opting for our poly-blend Silk Sensation or ordering a swatch pack of all of our fabrics for a real hands on feel. This way, you can clearly see how colours turn out on different materials.
Sizing For Hemming And Shrinkage
We have a full service cut and sew operation here at Contrado the home of Bags of Love. For these fabric prints we can add a hem if you wish for a small charge. (Please allow here an additional 1-2 days of production time.) We create a small one or two fold hem that typically uses 5 to 20mm of material depending on the thickness of the fabric. So for example you could order 100x100cm, so expect your fabric to be approx. 98.5x98.5cm after hemming (please allow for hem, and on top of that please also allow for shrinkage of min 2%). The thicker the fabric the bigger the hem will be. We have black or white thread that you can choose. On our silk and other light woven fabrics, one hemmed edge will be straight (vertically down the roll) and the other will be slightly rippled. The hemming material allowances are as follows and you need to make your print bigger to accommodate the hem:
- Light fabrics like silks we use 6-8mm in the hem (2 fold), so width/height will be minus 12-16mm
- Medium fabrics that fray, we use 15-20mm in the hem (2 fold) so width/height will be minus 35-40mm
- Stiff/heavy/no-fray fabrics we use 15-20mm in the hem (1 fold) so width/height will be minus 35-40mm
All of these measurements are approximate and can vary. Including with shrinkage it can mean a fairly significant difference to ordered dimensions so please plan your print accordingly. Depending on how open the weave is, our fabric can shrink anywhere from 2% to 8% with the average being 2.5%.
Please be aware that for hemming your fabric's dimensions need to be at least 30cm x 30cm.
Tiling Patterns On Textile
It is also possible to repeat patterns in a tiled effect for your fabric print run in our design system. We make this easy for you with our tools. You can also prepare your document beforehand to allow the tiling in the desired repeat and scale you need, then you can upload the file. There is a video above on how to tile your pattern in our free easy to use online fabric print design software.
*Guarantee: 3 year guarantee on fabric structure on all materials. 3 year print guarantee on dye sublimation printing for colour (excludes natural fibres printed with pigment).
Please note that natural and in particular organic fabrics such as our Organic Cotton Canvas naturally show subtle asperities which are part of the fibre of the fabric. As such, these elements might slightly show through your designs and will be more visible when light or white designs are printed. These will be less visible with darker colours, patterns, or montages. The organic cotton canvas remains one of the popular choices among our customers. A design tip would be to opt for darker shades and patterns.