Standing out in sports and athletic wear or branded apparel requires choosing the right printing technique that provides vibrant and long-lasting designs. When you want printed garments without a raised or plastic texture, sublimation printing is the ideal choice. Heat and pressure cause specialized ink to permeate the fabric, creating a permanent, smooth imprint.
Discover how we sublimate garments so you can consider Sportira for your team uniforms or branded athletic attire.
How Sublimation Printing Works
This digital printing method uses a dye-sublimation printer and specialized inks to print a design onto a transfer paper. The artwork is first printed on a transfer sheet, which later goes on top of your fabric—mainly polyester—where the design will appear. Then, the sheet and cloth go through a heat transfer press. The intense heat (around 200ºC) creates openings in the polyester fabric and sublimates the inks into the fibres. The dyes solidify once the fabric cools and dries. The printed motif is less likely to peel or crack because the design becomes part of the fabric rather than just sitting on top like in printing.
Sublimating Apparel the Sportira Way
Sportira’s sublimation process has earned customer trust and satisfaction in our 25 years in business. Our production hub is in Montreal, so our apparel is proudly “Made in Canada.” The process is done in seven steps:
1. Uniform/apparel style selection
You can choose your team uniform or promotional product’s style—from jerseys and short to long-sleeved tops to sweatshirts and jackets with or without hoodies (and a choice of quarter to full zippers). We also customize shorts, team pinnies, neck gaiters, compression sleeves, and more.
2. Design customization
Our in-house art team is ready to help you design your logo, or you can provide us with your design. We can also create graphics representing the entire look of a uniform set.
3. Printing the design on transfer paper
Sportira uses high-quality transfer paper to match our cutting-edge sublimation printers.
The printer produces a mirror image of the final design that will appear on the garment, causing the text on the transfer sheet to appear reversed, just like in the photo above. Once the design is transferred to the cloth, the text will appear the right way up.
4. Transferring the design to fabric
As part of our sustainability commitment, we print on most of our sports team uniforms using REPREVE fabric, the leading brand in recycled performance fibre that is made from plastic bottles.
5. Fabric pattern cutting
We print on and cut the fabric at our Montreal facility. Local production enables us to be more accessible to you while you support local talent.
6. Sewing
Sewing is the last production step. The cut pieces of fabric are then sewn to complete the garment. Attention to detail is key in this step to ensure a high quality product.
7. Packaging and shipping
We package orders by team for our sports leagues and our sports clubs. Our clients can count on rapid delivery – we’ve even been known to show up to a game to make sure the team has its gear.
It doesn’t matter how large your team is or how many teams you have. Sportira can accommodate wholesale/bulk orders. We can provide a personalized quote tailored to your needs when you contact us today.