Digital Printing On Fabric

Reviews for Fabric Printing

Digital Printing On Fabric

Create Your Own Fabric

from €15.50

We print your designs, patterns or photos on a wide range of fabrics. Have your textile design custom prin...

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    Ships in 1 - 2 days

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    Delivery: €9.95

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    Handmade item

Custom Textile Printing By Metre

  • Wide range of 138 textiles, fast turnaround 
  • Your design. No minimum order
  • Print textiles up to 1.6m wide 
  • Print fused into textile fibres, with hem option
  • Fast delivery option
  • 3 Year Guarantee *

Textile Printing On Demand. Digital textile prints are easy for us to produce as we are constantly supplying fabrics or making our own bespoke digital fabric printing creations for our customers.

We are a leading bespoke fabric printing supplier and have our own lines of products, all printed and made here under one roof. For this reason it allows us to provide personalised textile prints on demand to you too.
  • 138 different fabric options
  • Ever expanding textile library
  • Personalised with your photos
  • Create your own design
  • No minimum orders
  • All hand printed
  • Fade-resistant printing methods
  • Eco-friendly inks, edge to edge
  • Hemming options available

Weight

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Composition

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Print Type

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Uses

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Special properties

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Handle

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Construction

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Transparency

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Reflection

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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.

Advanced technology

With our latest technology dye sublimation process, you will get rich deep and intensely accurate colour reproduction. Our advanced technology including digital pigment printing on cottons and silks, is producing stunning results for all customer types. The processes we use are clean, low waste, colour fast and kinder to the environment than many other techniques.

With regards to the Pima Lawn and Janice Poplin Cotton, due to the nature of the fabric and our processing methods there can be occasional very small white dots where pieces of cotton fluff are removed revealing unprinted white base material. Please note that this is normal and cannot be avoided but won't affect the strong colours and detailed nature of your print.

Print Guideline

  • DPI-Print Guideline Icon

    What's the best resolution to print in?

    All of our fabrics are printed at 200dpi. This works for us as it combines a great quality as well as a good file weight. In order to avoid resizing and interpolation, we recommend that you scale your image to 100% at 200dpi. Our design interface works with a traffic light system that acts as a quality marker for your designs. This will show you whether the resolution is too low for printing. When you re-upload your design with a highest resolution, the traffic lights will change colour, showing you're good to go. A message will pop up alongside the traffic lights to let you know if the resolution is too low or if you have a good quality image. 

  • scaling-Print Guideline Icon

    Will my image be scaled to fit?

    Your uploaded design will automatically be scaled to fit the size of fabric you've chosen. You can change the dimensions of your fabric by amending the measurements on the ‘Product Options’ tab, under ‘Print Size’. To see how this fits with the dimensions of your image/design, you can refer to the ‘Images & Text Tools’ tab under 'Quality Information'. Here, you will be able to edit the dimensions of the image.

  • RGB-CMYK Print Guideline Icon

    Should I choose RGB or CMYK?

    We always recommend using an RGB colour space when you upload your images. More specifically, we suggest using the sRGB image profile, to achieve best colour results. This will need to be done in your editing software: choose RGB as the working space, and assign the image profile as sRGB (full name sRGB IEC61966-2.1).

  • Print-Roll Length Fabric Guide Icon

    Is there a maximum length I can print on?

    There is no length limit for most of our fabrics. Our preview design window is set up to display a maximum of 10m to help you visualise the print, but that doesn't mean this is the print limit. If you'd like to order more, you can increase the quantity (x2 for 20m or x4 for 40m for example) and order as much as you'd like. Larger volumes will receive an automatic discount too. While the fabric length is nothing to worry about, each individual fabric will have a maximum width side: these can be found on the fabric's page information or in the design interface. 

  • Borders-Print Guideline Icon

    Should I add white space for borders or cutting onto my design?

    Yes, that will help you when it comes to cutting or framing your printed fabric. We recommend always adding a little extra space for borders into your purchased fabric size. When we print your materials, or send out fabric samples, we typically trim squarely around the fabric, leaving approximately 5mm white space. Cutting neatly on the line has an additional fee.

  • crocking-Print Guideline Icon

    What is crocking?

    Crocking is the term used to describe fading along the creases in a fabric. It typically can occur after constant washing or heavy use of digitally printed natural fabrics. Crocking can be minimised by hand washing your fabrics at a cooler temperature, rather than machine washing. If you want to make sure there's no chance of crocking, we'd suggest you use a poly fabric. 

  • organics-Print Guideline Icon

    Is it normal for colours to appear lighter on organic fabrics?

    Yes, our organic fabrics don't have an additional coating like non-organic fabrics have, which means it absorbs the inks deep into its fibre and reducing the colour strength slightly (this can be approximately -40%). If you would like a bolder, more vibrant colour for your fabric, we would suggest using a non-organic fabric. 

  • Transfer-Print Guideline Icon

    Can I supply my own fabric for you to print onto?

    Unfortunately not; all of our fabrics have been tested meticulously to ensure we know exactly how to get the best results, and our facilities cater perfectly to them. If you are set on a fabric we don't offer, we can offer custom printed sublimation paper to order which will allow you to heat press your designs onto your own fabrics.

  • Jpeg-Tiff Print Guideline Icon

    Which is a better image format: TIFF or JPEG?

    If your design is simple and less intricate, a JPEG will be absolutely fine. However, if you have created a design with multi-coloured detailing, we would recommend saving your design in a TIFF format. 

  • Shrinkage-Print Guideline Icon

    Will my material shrink during printing?

    Similar to other fabric printing processes, shrinkage can occur. The amount of shrinkage will depend on the fabric, but as a general rule of thumb, please allow for 2-8% shrinkage when working out your measurements. Shrinkage is not an exact science, and the amount of shrinkage will vary from print run to print run. We'd always suggest ordering a little more than you need for your project. 

  • Print-Both Sides Print Guideline Icon

    Can I order double sided printed fabric?

    Many of the fabrics we offer are semi-transparent, so printing on both sides of the fabric is not a service we offer. 

  • Labels-Print Guideline Icon

    Can I order labels in a different fabric? Are the labels cut like normal fabric labels?

    At the moment, all of our fabric labels are printed on satin fabric. For now, we believe this is the best choice, but will potentially introduce other options in the future. All labels are cut to the same label format. If you would like to choose a different fabric and format for your labels, you could always order a sheet of the fabric of your choice to create labels yourself. 

  • Eco friendly Printing

    How do you print your fabrics in an eco-friendly way?

    Our fabrics are printed with water-based inks as environmental consciousness is always front of our minds. Water-based inks include no chemicals or solvents, and our printing process uses heat to fix colours and patterns into place to avoid excess or contaminated water returning into the water system (this is something that can occur through steaming). All printing, fulfilment and production is done in-house, and rather than rolling the fabrics or sending them in a tube, you will receive your material folded up. This amounts to 150 tubes saved a week, as well as much more space on the delivery van for more orders. (For delicate fabrics we make sure to package appropriately).

  • colour palette

    Will there be slight colour differences between my orders?

    Although very rare, there could be a slight colour difference from one print run to another. This is a normal part of the printing process, however we are always working to improve our colour profiles. It is unlikely that the difference in print runs will be hugely different (for example, it's unlikely your orange is suddenly going to be red). The likelihood of colour variations can be intensified fabric to fabric due to materials having different grains and textures; natural fabrics typically have more muted colour tones, while poly alternatives have a bolder hue. This is because the construction of the material is different, and the printing method has to be altered slightly for more delicate, natural textiles.




Sizing For Hemming And Shrinkage

Hemming Options ICON

Our full cut & sew service at Bags of Love can be used to your full advantage. We even offer hemming for your fabrics at a small additional cost. Our hems are created with a one or two cold hem that typically uses around 5 to 20mm of fabric (depending on the thickness of your chosen material). Please bear this in mind when you are ordering your printed fabric with hems: If you would like your finished piece to be 100cm x 100cm, change your dimensions to 101.5cm instead to allow space for your hems (you will also need to include additional for potential shrinkage). The thicker the fabric, the bigger the hem will be. Your printed fabric will be hemmed with either Black or White thread. If you are ordering a lightly woven material or a printed silk, you will find that one hem will be straight, while the other slightly rippled.  The hemming material allowances are as follows and you need to make your print bigger to accommodate the hem:

  • Light Fabrics (20-100gsm): For silks and other light fabrics, we use 6-8mm in the hem (2 fold), so overall width/height will be minus 12-16mm
  • Medium Fabrics (101-200gsm): For medium-weight fabrics that fray, we use 15-20mm in the hem (2 fold) so overall width/height will be minus 35-40mm
  • Stiff/Heavy/No-fray fabrics: we use 15-20mm in the hem (1 fold) so overall width/height will be minus 35-40mm
All of these measurements can vary and should only be seen as an approximation. If you allow for hems and slight shrinkage, it can add a fairly significant amount to your ordered dimensions, so please make sure to consider these things prior to ordering. Depending on how open the weave is, our fabric can shrink anywhere from 2% to 8% with the average being 2.5%.
 

Choose From Three Finishes

We have three finishing options available:
  • As it comes: We simply cut around your image with scissors - leaving a perhaps uneven white border.
  • Hem with thread: We can offer your fabric hemmed with a black or white thread. This will add an additional 1-2 days of production time to your order. Please refer to the dimensions above to gauge how the hemming will affect the size of your print. You will have a choice of an overlock hem or folded hem (one or two fold depending on the fabric) however not all fabrics are suited to both hem types. In the design interface, you will be able to see which options are available to you. If you can only see one hem available, this means that this is the only suitable hem for this material type.
  • Cut on the line: Rather than our 'as it comes' option, we will cut neatly on the edge of your design against the grain of the fabric. If you have a border around your design we will cut around that border. If the design takes up the whole fabric, we will neatly cut around the edge of the image. Cutting against the grain is standard for fabric cutting, and as such lighter materials such as Georgette or Mulmul will have a slight wave in them, and some fraying may occur.
All of our fabrics are carefully hand cut. It is not always possible to maintain a perfectly straight cut for certain fabrics, so please bear this is mind if you see your edge has a slightly uneven look or a little fraying. This is not a flaw in the material. 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.

For further information about our fabrics see our FAQs

Please note: As everything we provide is handmade to order, you may find a slight variance in the sizes. 

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