Screen Printing on Made-to-Order Garments for Clothing Brands
This part of the page covers the working detail: what we print and where it sits on the garment, how artwork becomes screens, how the printed strike-off approval works, and how print quality is held from the first piece of an order to the last.
1. What We Screen Print and Where It Sits
Screen printing at our factory runs on garments we are already making for the buyer - the print is a stage inside a clothing order, not a separate job on bought-in blanks. The placements buyers use most are:
- Chest prints - the standard position for logos, graphics and brand marks on tees and polos.
- Full back prints - large artwork across the back panel, common on tees, hoodies and workwear.
- Sleeve and pocket-area prints - smaller marks where the garment design calls for them.
- Multi-position prints - front and back, or chest and sleeve, set up as one print programme for the style.
Each screen carries one colour of the design, so artwork is separated into its colours at preparation stage. Bold, defined artwork prints most faithfully; our preparation team will tell you plainly if a design's fine detail needs adjusting to hold at production scale.
A word of honesty about method: screen printing rewards bold, separated colour. Fine photographic shading and very fine line work sit at the edge of what screens hold well, and where a design lives at that edge we will show you on the strike-off exactly what the method does with it, before you commit an order to it. Choosing the right styles for the method is part of the service, not a limitation we hide.
2. Artwork, Colour Separation and Screen Preparation
Printing starts from your artwork file and your colour references:
- The design is separated into one screen per colour.
- Screens are prepared at the mesh counts the fabric and the design need.
- The ink system is chosen - plastisol for opacity and durability, water-based for a soft hand feel on light fabrics.
A test print follows before anything is committed, so the strike-off in the next stage is printed from settled screens rather than first attempts.
Colour is matched to your reference - a swatch, a standard reference or an approved print from a previous order. Because ink on fabric reads differently from ink on paper, the colour that counts is the one on the struck-off garment, which is why the approval stage below exists and why we do not skip it.
Print position is specified the same careful way. A position is measured from fixed garment points - so many centimetres below the neck seam, centred on the chest seam line - and recorded on the order file, because "centre chest" means slightly different things to different people and the measuring tape settles it. On the tables, printed pieces are checked back to those recorded measurements through the run.
3. The Printed Strike-Off: Approval Before Bulk
Before any bulk printing, we print the design on the actual garment, in the actual position, and that printed sample - the strike-off - is what you approve. You check:
- The size of the print.
- Its position on the garment.
- The colours against your references.
- The hand feel of the cured print.
Nothing in bulk is printed until that approval is in the file, because a print fault repeated across thousands of pieces cannot be unprinted. Approving on the real garment, in the real ink, removes the gap between a screen image and a finished product.
If your programme repeats across seasons, the approved strike-off and the screen record are kept, so a reprint starts from the last approved print instead of from a fresh interpretation of the artwork.
The strike-off stage is also where print size across the size range is settled. A chest print can be held at one size for every garment size, or scaled with the sizes; both are legitimate, they look different on the smallest and largest pieces, and the decision belongs on the order file, demonstrated on real garments - not discovered when the bulk comes off the tables.
4. Printing Runs on Your Garment Order
Because the printing section works inside the same factory as the sewing lines, a printed order has one file and one merchandiser from cutting to carton:
- Garments move from the sewing lines to the print tables.
- They are printed in size and colour order.
- They are cured.
- They are checked piece by piece and returned for finishing and packing.
There is no transport between companies, no second order file and no hand-over where responsibility blurs - the print stage is simply one stage inside your order's production, sequenced with the rest.
It also settles responsibility. When the garment and its print come from one factory, there is no version of events where the sewing blames the printing or the printing blames the sewing: the order file, the strike-off and the finished garments are all in one building, under one team that answers for the whole product.
Buyers building a branded range usually combine printing with the garment's other branding: woven labels and packaging through our private label and OEM programme, and stitched logos through our embroidery section where a design mixes both techniques.
5. How Print Quality Is Held Across the Order
A screen print can drift over a long run - a screen wears, an ink mix thins, a placement creeps - so the table checks printed pieces against the approved strike-off as the run goes:
- Colour.
- Registration between colours.
- Position on the garment.
- Coverage.
Pieces that fail are pulled at the table, not discovered at final inspection, and a worn screen is replaced before its wear becomes visible in the print. The buyer's own inspector sees the same comparison at pre-shipment inspection: print against approved strike-off, on the finished garment.
Prints are also checked after curing and again at final inspection, because a fault that shows only after the garment is folded is still a fault your customer will find. The standard is the approved strike-off, held in the checker's hand, from the first table to the last carton.
Curing is the unglamorous stage that decides how a print lives. Ink that is printed well but cured short will fail in the wash no matter how good it looked on the table, so cure is verified as part of the run, and the final inspection includes the cured surface - its feel, its coverage and its behaviour when the fabric is stretched, as a printed garment is stretched every time it is worn.
6. Quantities for Screen Printed Garment Orders
Screen printing runs on garment orders from 3,000 pieces per order, from 800 pieces per colour and style. A printed design normally runs across the pieces of its style in the order, and styles can combine towards the order total, so a buyer can print several designs in one programme. The per-style floor matters more in printing than in plain sewing: screens are prepared per design and per colour, and that preparation is a fixed piece of work whether it serves eight hundred garments or eighty.
For a first printed programme, the practical route is to prove the artwork on your strongest styles, approve the strike-offs carefully, and then extend printing across the range in later orders with the screen records already on file.
Multi-design programmes are planned as one schedule: the designs share the order, but each keeps its own screens, its own strike-off and its own checks. A design is never substituted onto another design's approval because the artwork looked similar - similar is exactly where wrong prints come from.
One approval per design, one record per design, and the tables work from both.
Screen Printing Services for Buyers in the USA, UK and Australia
Printed garment programmes arrive from our main markets with different emphases. The three below are the patterns we see most often when a screen printing order is being set up.
Printed Apparel Programmes for USA Brands
USA brands typically print at programme scale: a core graphic carried across tees, fleece and sometimes several colourways of the same garment. Running the garments and the printing in one factory keeps those colourways consistent - the same screens, the same ink standard and the same approved strike-off serve every version of the design in the order.
Screen Printed Clothing for UK Retail and Promotional Buyers
UK buyers split between retail ranges, where print quality is judged on the rail, and promotional clothing, where the print is the product and the deadline usually drives the order. Both run on the same discipline - an approved strike-off before bulk - because a promotional deadline is exactly when an unapproved colour or position does the most damage.
Custom Printed Garments for Australian Importers
Australian importers often combine printed knitwear with plain garments in one combined order, the print programme sitting inside a larger clothing programme. The order structure allows it: printed and unprinted styles count together towards the order total, while the printed styles keep their own screens, strike-offs and checks.