One of the most frequently asked questions we get is… At what size should I print this design to apply it on an XL size T-shirt? (and other sizes as well 😉).
Among our customers there are people with experience in t-shirt printing, but there are many others who fell in love with one of our designs, but don’t have any experience and don’t know where to start.
That’s exactly where the idea of creating our own blog came from and in each post we try to help you all, whether you are a beginner or an extraordinary crafter, sharing tutorials, tips and tricks so you can enjoy and nail all your crafting projects.
We have already shared a video tutorial for beginners and several bonus videos, explaining the secrets of the Iron-on-Heat Transfer technique with thermal paper.
We have also brought you a very complete video tutorial, where we learned the technique of Iron-on-Heat Transfer with Vinyl (HTV), explained step by step by a real expert, who also gave us her best tricks to achieve success in all our projects.
But back to the subject of this article, the doubt that often arises, especially the first couple of times you print your custom t-shirts, is what size your design should have and where you should place it.
How big and where
When it comes to making personalized t-shirts, it is essential to choose the right size for the design. If the design is too small, the shirt will look unprofessional. If the design is too large, it will look like you bought the wrong size shirt.
While the final size of your design and where it is placed will ultimately depend on your personal preference, we have developed a chart to help you size your design perfectly every time, or at least as is customary.
When you buy our designs, you get 5 different graphic formats, so you can use the one that best suits the printing technique you have chosen, to apply it on the chosen support.
That’s why you can choose the right size for your needs without technical limitations: SVG, DXF and EPS are vector files, which you can scale to any size without loss of quality/resolution, while PNG and JPG are high resolution files, large enough to print designs up to 30 square inches or even more.
In our guide we have included recommendations on the size of your design and where it should be placed starting from the neckline on baby, toddler, youth and adult t-shirts even in plus sizes. Remember this is only a guide: your personal preferences (or those of your customers) could be larger or smaller designs, but this will give you a good starting point.
3 steps to center your design on the T-shirt
For crafters who struggle to find the center of their garments and correctly place their designs, we have a really simple trick that will help you every time.
Start by folding your garment in half lengthwise. Lightly iron the shirt where you’ve folded it in half. When you unfold the shirt, you’ll be left with a line that you can use as a center point.
Next, fold the top of the shirt down and create a crease right underneath the armpit. Iron to create a crease.
As you can see, we now have perfect gridlines to work with!
Finally, fold your design in half (adhesive side out) and crease the top to create an indentation in the backing sheet. Now you can then align the crease with the line of the t-shirt. This is a fairly foolproof method for finding the center of the shirt. Since each shirt may vary slightly due to manufacturing, this is the best way to center and place your designs on t-shirts and other garments.
We hope you find this post very helpful. Click here to download a .pdf version of our size chart.
Print a copy and keep it with your work tools for quick reference.
If you liked this post, please don’t keep it to yourself, share it with your friends and happy crafting!
See you soon, Audrey 💥
You must be logged in to post a comment.