Contract Fabric Printing – Small Pattern Designs & Repeats

This week we have had some fun photographing our printers in action printing some small pattern repeating designs. Printing such detailed artwork onto fabric demands the very best equipment properly set up for this type of job. Standard banner fabric printing equipment and basic fabric printers won’t achieve the colour gamut or intensity or high dpi resolution that printing small pattern repeating designs demands.

Our dye sublimation process using the latest generation Roland TexArt printers ensures vivid colours and sharp images. What’s more it’s much more durable than other print methods.  We are able to print highly detailed small pattern repeat designs to the highest possible standard. Because we use an advanced 8 Colour print process (CMYK + 4) instead of the standard 4 Colour CMYK process we are able to print small pattern designs with precision and stunning colour. With our printers capable of printing at 1440 dpi you can be sure that every detail gets printed with maximum precision. That’s over 2 million dots per square inch of printed fabric!

We are able to print small pattern designs on a wide range of fabrics including our Standard Polyester, Exhibition Suedette, Standard Display Fabric which is also FR (Fire Retardant) and Water Resistant Polyester.

We are always thrilled to be able to take our client’s intricate designs and turn them into a printed product. We know very well however that printing small pattern designs starts with having the right artwork with the repeats all set up.

Here are a few Tips for working with textile pattern repeats.

• Make sure you or your client are happy with the basic design before you set up the repeats. A lot of time can be wasted setting up the repeats only to discover that a change is needed to the basic design. Get that right first.
• Don’t cut corners when setting up the pattern repeats. The latest sofware and high-resolution digital textile printers mean that seamless repeats are now expected as standard.
• Once you have your basic pattern always consider using half-drop repeats. They are great for creating professional looking seamless repeats in a minimum of time.
• Creating small repeats is obviously tempting because of the less apparent work involved but sometimes this can be a false economy with your time as small repeats are clearly more prone to showing up repeat patterns. Don’t waste time trying to make a small repeat work when it’s produing unwanted strips or lines but jump straight to trying a larger repeat which can often solve the problem more quickly.
• Create repeat mock ups as you go. Don’t wait until you have completed the task to mock up the repeat. Check whether you need to change repeat type or size before investing too much time. Spotting lines, holes, and balance issues at an early stage save stime in the long run.
• Sample. Sample. Sample. With affordable very short run on demand digital fabric printing you can quickly and cheaply take your small pattern fabric repeat from your screen to printed product in a day or two. Ensure you are getting your samples printed at high resolutions (1200 DPI plus) and on wide colour gamut (8 colour) printers to ensure your design is produced to the highest possible standard.
• Test. Test. Test. Once you’ve got your sample printed show it to colleagues, friends, and look critically at it yourself. After you’ve been staring at it for several hours on the screen you may well find that somebody else can spot things that you can’t.

The team here at Textile Town have many years of experience printing repeat patterns. With the very latest fabric printers available to us we’re here to help you take your creative output from computer to fabric to the highest possible standard with the minimum of time and expense. Do give us a call, chat online at our website, or email us.