I hope everyone is having a great year so far airbrushing and I hope all of you who have businesses are doing well and making your customers happy, I know it isn’t easy sometimes. This time I’m going to cover a topic I keep seeing brought up on the message boards and in e-mails I keep getting. It’s going to be about how to keep your shirts looking good and not have the paint wash out. Some of the questions I keep hearing are: What is the proper way to heat set? Do I need to heat set? How do I tell the customer to take care of the shirt after they re- ceive it? All these are great questions and for a newbie just getting into airbrushing, very important. Here is what I have printed out and give to every cus- tomer that has a shirt done by me.


1. Be sure to turn shirt inside out


2. Use cold water. Never use Woolite or bleach 3. Shirt may be machine or hand washed 4. Tumble dry on low or hang dry


Ok for the first step, turning it inside out when you wash it will help keep the detergent from fading the colors of the paint. Also, when you use a dryer it breaks down the fibers of the material and fuzzies appear. This happens mostly on the outside of the fabric so if the shirt is inside out the inside part of the shirt will get the fuzzies more than the outside where the art work is. Fuzzies are what make most shirts look like the paint faded even if the shirt was properly heat set. 100% cotton shirts are more prone to this which is why most T –Shirt artists use a 50- 50 blend shirt. Colors appear brighter on 100% at first but the 50-50-blend hold up better in the long run. Now for the Woolite, when I first started airbrushing I was told the instructions on how to wash the shirts and was told no bleach or bleach alts and no Woolite. I was stunned to hear Woolite was a no, no so I did what everyone should do, some wash tests. And sure enough when I used bleach or Woolite the shirts faded much faster than using regular detergent, which is why I don’t recommend it. I suggest you all do some shirts and wash them differently to conduct your own tests. This way you will know for sure what works best for you; especially if you don’t use a heat press.My wife throws all her shirts in the wash in- side out and washes them with all the light colored cloth- ing in warm water; she refuses to use cold, detergent or fabric softener. To dry the shirts she turns them inside out in and puts them in the dryer. Her method works well as she has shirts I painted for her over three years


ago that still look darn good.The main thing that is going to keep the paint from fading is heat setting. Using a shirt heat press works best, set it at 375 degrees and heat set the shirt for 20-25 seconds. You can use an iron if a heat press is not available. Simple turn the iron too it’s hottest setting, turn the shirt inside out, move the iron slowly while press- ing down hard till you see little puffs of smoke coming off the shirt. This is the water evaporating from the paint; once you see this happening the paint is set. Just remember slow, hard pressure and on the hottest setting. As for using a cloth’s dryer to heat set, I don’t recommend it in my tests they all faded badly. A cloth’s dryer provides the heat and will dry the paint but it doesn’t have the pres- sure to squeeze the paint into the fibers. As added protection I also use Aqua Flow top binder on all my shirts. You don’t really need it on 50/50 blend tees but you do on 100% cotton. It helps keep them from fading and does make a difference, do a test and you’ll see. Some people think this is an unnecessary step and wastes time but it only takes three seconds to do, WOW a whole three seconds. I have been doing this from day one and have never had a shirt returned for fading, Never! My customers are #1 and if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have a store so quality comes first. Like I said, do some tests to see which method works best for you. If you’re practicing try different things on differ- ent shirts or break your shirt into sections and do different stuff to each; throw it in the laundry and wash it every time you do the laundry. Have a shirt you did at the same time and don’t wash it and compare the two after 5, 10, 15 washes and so on so you can see which works best. DO NOT take my word or anyone else’s word about this stuff, TRY it yourself, then you’ll know. That’s what I did and that’s why I know what works best for me. That’ll do it for this time. If you would like to see your question answered here in the magazine, or would like to see a t-shirt or tag related article written, send your ques- tions and ideas to askjammer@evenlink.com Remember I can’t do this without you all so keep the questions com- ing. If you would like to see some of my work, you can check it out at http://www.freewebs.com/airdesigns/


Keep Sprayin’ Jammer


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