There are a select breed of us who get way more excited walking into sporting good stores than any department store. Getting a new pair of running shoes is more exciting than new heels. Workout apparel tops the birthday wish lists. Butterflies flutter when you feel the stretch of fresh spandex in a pair of compression shorts. And don’t get me started on how inspired I am when I put on a new pair of capri running tights.

Why running capris?

They’re warmer than shorts but cooler than full tights. They work in all kinds of weather. They come in dozens of patterns and designs, so you never get bored of them and are free to express your own style.

But the real game changer is the phone pocket on running capris, like these from Fabb Activewear.

T-shirts aren’t rocket science, but there is a wide array of options available on the market, and anyone who has spent a minute looking at a screen printer’s catalog knows how overwhelming it can be. Fortunately, knowing a few key attributes can help determine whether your next one finds its way into the Goodwill bin or the bottom of the laundry basket. This post will focus on fabric weight and fiber (the material that makes up the threads). Odds are, you already have a favorite weight and fiber determining which shirts you reach for in the morning, even if you don’t know it!

We would love to help with that! If your questions aren’t answered below, please send an email to sales@annarbortees.com and we will do our best to answer them for you!

What sizes are available?

We have sizes 4 through 13 in the low tops, for the high tops we have sizes 8 through 13. Our shoes are a unisex style with men’s sizing­, so just add two sizes to get the equivalent female shoe size (i.e. our size 8 US Men’s is equivalent to a US Women’s 10.)

What’s the Stitch?

Plain Boring Tee

Branded Apparel

Embroidery is the process of decorating fabric or other materials with a needle and thread. Both human hands and machines can do this. While embroidering by hand may add a personal touch, our need for speed drives us to use embroidery machines. Our machines can embroider between 700-950 stitches per minute. The machines also have 15 needle heads that allow for 15 different customized colors of thread. This means we can offer embroidery with a ton of colors and provide it in one week.

Glue, Laser, Scissors

Quality applique is difficult...

Pictured: one of our competitors

It’s especially difficult when done by hand. The human element means no guarantee that each cut out is exactly the same. As a result, hand cut applique can end up looking like a toddler made a mess no one wants (unless it is a gift from an actual toddler who put much time and love into it). This is one of the reasons why we don’t hand cut applique. Also, it would take a long time to hand cut all that imperfect applique.

Every Kiss Begins with Applique!

Applique can make any garment stand out among the hordes of plain boring garments.

If that picture wasn’t convincing enough, read on to discover why applique may be the right choice for you.

Applique? Sounds fancy...

The word "appliqué" derives from the French verb "appliquer," meaning "to put on." Applique is a sewing technique that involves stitching a small piece of fabric onto a larger one to make a pattern or design. We start by stitching the piece of applique to the shirt in the shape of your design. Then, a laser cuts where the design was stitched so we can remove the excess material around the outline.

As discussed in our previous blog, Ready for the Closeup: Photographic Screens, screen printing was a major industry by the 1930’s. In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt created, as part of the New Deal, the Work Projects Administration (WPA). He created the WPA to help employ Americans during the Great Depression. In fact, the WPA became one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts. Many workers screen printed screen the WPA's very own posters and signs. However, some screen printers desired to distance artistic printing from its' industrial process roots. So, they renamed screen printing the more hoity-toity sounding “Serigraphy”.

Digitize Me, Cap’n!

Embroidery digitization is the process of converting existing artwork, like a company logo or team emblem, into a stitch file that an embroidery machine can sew onto a garment. Before we can embroider any design, we must digitize it first. Digitizing is a complex process that is both art and science. The digitizer must plot out how the continuous threads of different colors will shape the design. After we digitize the art, we send it over to the embroidery machine.

The secret to the screen printer’s tan

As we discussed in our previous post, Let Them Screen Prints!: Production for the Masses, many technological advances eased the difficulties of screen printing. It emerged from the Industrial Revolution as a streamlined, mass production process. However, there were still many advances to come. Around 1911 to 1915, Roy Beck, Charles Peter, and Edward Owens began experimenting with the first photographic screens. Photographic screens use a UV sensitive photo emulsion (glue-like goo). Coating the screen was usually done by filling up a trough and dragging it across the surface. When hardened, the emulsion produced a uniform coating that was water soluble.

As we discussed in our previous post, For Their Dyes Only: the Secret of Silk, printing in its early forms had been around for hundreds of years. However, the scientific and technological advances of the industrial revolution reinvented the practice. Screen printing began to focus on streamlined mass production as opposed to the painstaking craft of yore. Some of the earliest machine printing with stencils started during the late 1880's.