Fully Sublimated vs. Embroidery onto a garment. November 26 2014

As with any manufacturing process, being aware of what the 'terms' mean can ultimately speed up the production and confirmation process for your order. When you want to decide on whether to use an embroidery or to go fully sublimated for your team's logos, consider the below first. 

EMBROIDERED LOGOS:
- This is where the logo is stitched into the garment and you can feel this over the fabric.
- The logo is 'digitized' from a high resolution image to determine the number of stitches that are required to make up the image and where the embroidery will start and finish on the area of your garment.
- The process of digitizing an image takes time and a complex (larger) image may take a few more days than a more simplistic image. You may consider this when there is a tight time frame with your order.
- Once each logo is digitized a final 'proof' will be sent through to confirm before it gets embroidered onto the garment to ensure the colours, logo and size is correct. Once this embroidery file is confirmed we can then apply it to your garment.
- As you are using more thread to embroider these logos onto your garment this will also mean that the garment will incur more costs and therefore will be ultimately more expensive. The more logos that need to be embroidered, the longer the production process and the higher the overall cost of your item.

SUBLIMATED LOGOS:
- Sublimation is the term used when digital print is transferred from printing paper to fabric under a very high heat process. This high heat will seal the colours into the fabric to ensure they do not run or fade.
- As the process is digital, any colour, pattern, design or logo can be sublimated onto a variety of fabric knits as long as they have been converted to the correct file types first.
- The process of sublimating a logo is very straight forward and if the images used are of high resolution (usual file types required are vector files, .PDF, AI, .PSD)  these will be reproduced 100% onto the fabric without any loss in quality.
- This method of production is extremely fast and once all logos, colours and artwork is confirmed before production the final garment will be identical to what has been shown to the client. For an example of this check out our page showing artwork to final product here.

Therefore, it is clear that embroidery is a longer process during the production of any garment and a fully sublimated garment will be quicker to produce from artwork to completed product. If time is tight and you need an order urgently the sublimation process is a very good method of getting the logos onto you items quickly. However, some clubs require certain logos to be embroidered and as long as you bear the higher cost (and sometimes) longer production time in mind then this too is a great option! As always, here at Impact Prowear if you have any questions about your orders or are confused about any lingo we are using, get in touch with us and we will gladly help out!