It’s natural to want to set up your printer and your press, then make something pretty. I totally get that! I really do! BUT, those tumblers or tees or slate blanks are not cheap. It hurts to ruin them because once you sublimate it, sublimation is permanent and generally can’t be removed. Every new hobby has a learning curve, why not learn on cheaper material? And, what if your practice can actually teach you and get your confidence up?

You’ll need your confidence kit from the previous article, which contains some 100% polyester fabric, your notebook, your pen, and your patience. You’ll also need to get your sublimation paper, probably 10 sheets or so, and a design to print (more on that in a minute).

What’s the Purpose of this Project?

The basic idea is to print off quite a few of the same design, then press them onto the fabric using different combinations of temperature, time, and pressure. It’s important to do this before you start changing color settings on your printer, because temperature, time, and pressure, can fairly dramatically impact the final color of your project.

By pressing the same design using different parameters (and writing those parameters on the pressed fabric), you’ll see how these parameters change the outcome and have your very own reference chart to refer to in the future. 

Step 1: Find a Design to Print

While you can use any design, it’s probably good to use one that uses a range of colors, including black and white. You’ll want to find a “printer test image.”

Below is the Google search that I did for “printer test image.” The image search was really helpful and links to many, many more! I decided I liked the one I drew a red square around because it has skin tones, several black and white photos, several kinds of color images, a series of squares with a gradient gray scale, and a matrix of colors with discrete squares from colorful to almost white.  Each of these serves a purpose: skin tones are notoriously difficult, the sky in between the red rocks and the strawberries will look strange if the color is a bit off, the black and white photos show contrast and shadows, there should be noticeable differences between the colors of the gradients, and the colors should be true. 

Do a little searching and pick one you like. Download it to your computer and we’ll work on printing it next.

Note: The one I’ve highlighted is available at https://danmc.net/posts/uwe-steinmueller-printer-evaluation-image/. Some excellent commentary on what to look for in that image to see if your colors are pressing properly is at www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html (the link to the image is broken on that page, however). This is a design that Bill Atkinson came up with. He’s the guy that actually invented major parts of the digital printing process at Apple (he was employee #51). After retiring from Apple, he is now a nature photographer. If anyone knows about setting up and using printers, it’s Bill Atkinson.

Why not use Jennifer Maker’s Subliflower or similar brightly colored artwork? You certainly can, but you’ll be calibrating your printer and press for colors that don’t have real-world counterparts. A super-brilliant hot pink can be a bit more red or a bit on the purple side and still look great. And look how bright you can get them! Now print a photo of your baby/spouse/grandparent, and super-bright skin that leans red looks, uh, not good. Start first with the photos and the color gradients and get that looking good. (Make a note of these settings for photos and neutral or pastel color designs.) Then you can tweak those settings with the Subliflower for artwork that can be very bright! (And then write those settings down separately.)

Step 2: Prepare the Image for Printing.

If you already know how to import an image in your favorite graphics program, go ahead and do that now. You can size it for a full page. Then skip to Step 3.

If you don’t know how to do this, I recommend using Word or Google Docs or Pages on the Mac. The instructions here are for Word, but should be similar for most applications.

1. Open up your app.
2. Insert the picture with: Insert -> Picture -> From this Device, then find your picture that you downloaded. 

You may need to turn the page to landscape to fit it on there. Do that with:

Layout -> Orientation -> Landscape

Then resize the picture by first clicking on it to get the “handles” on the picture, then drag the handle until it fills the page.

Now save your work so you can find it again, perhaps call it “PrinterTestImage.”

If you want to learn a bit about resizing, here’s an option. We’ll put four of these on the page.

Resize the image by first making sure it’s selected. Click on it until you see the handles (circles on each corner). Click on Picture Format, then find the Size group of commands. Enter 5.5” on for the width. Then, look for the Wrap Text option, click that to open it, and select Behind Text.



Before we go further, we need to set the margins. Select the Layout tab from the menu, then Margins. On the list, select the Custom Margins at the bottom. On the resulting screen, enter 0.12″ for the top, left, bottom, and right margins, then click OK.

Now we’re going to select the image again and make some copies. If you’re familiar with Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+P to paste, copy the image and make three copies. If you need to use the menus, select the Home option from the menu bar, then select the two pieces of overlapping papers option (next to Paste and under the scissors icon) to copy. It won’t look like much happened. Then press the Paste clipboard icon three times to make 3 copies.

Now move those three copies into the three other corners. To ensure that they are inside the printable area, slow down as you near the margin areas. A green line will show as you cross the margins. If you stop moving (but keep holding the mouse button down) and see green lines at the top and down the side, you’ve got it perfectly placed in the corner! Good job! However, if you’re a little inside those lines, you’re still good. We don’t have to be perfect!

Don’t forget to save your work!

Step 3: Print your Image

Every program prints differently. Generally speaking, there’s a button with a printer on it, a menu option (typically File -> Print), or holding the Control button and tapping P (Ctrl+P).

At first, the Word printing dialog comes up. It shows your document. Shown here is a different test print — what’s shown there should always look like what you want to print.

If you have a Sawgrass, Brother SP-1, or Epson F170 or Epson F570 — refer to your printer’s instructions to continue printing. You do NOT need to check all these. You can likely just change the copies to 5 and then press Print. Then skip to Step 4: Prepare to Press.

The red arrow shows your selected printer. If this is not the printer you want to use, click on the printer name and select the one you do want to use. Then select Printer Properties to double-check our settings.

The Printing Preferences dialog comes up. Check at the top for the printer name, then check to be sure that the following are set:

• Document Size: Letter
• Orientation: Our document is set to print landscape, so make sure Landscape is selected!
• Paper type: Premium Presentation Paper Matte.
  • If this says Plain Paper or other setting you don’t want, click on your preset on the left side to set them all. Then go back and recheck the above options before continuing.
• 2-Sided Printing: Off
• Copies: Start with 1, but you can put 4 here the second time you print. (Note: it’s going to take 4 times as long, so keep your computer awake!)
• Quiet Mode: Off
• Then click on More Options for the next screen.

• Document Size: Letter
• Output Paper: Same as Document size
• Reduce/Enlarge Document: UNCHECKED.
• Color Correction: Automatic
• Rotate 180 degrees: Leave unchecked
• Bidirectional Printing (or Fast Printing on some printers): UNCHECKED
• Mirror Image: CHECKED.

When these look good, press OK. You’ll go back to the Word dialog, then you can press Print. Print 5 pages.

Step 4: Prepare to Press

In order to press, we’ll want to cut these images apart. Using scissors or a paper trimmer, separate the four images printed on one page. Do they have to be cut perfectly? Nope! However, if you use a trimmer, you’ll get nice, straight edges that help you position it on your blank. Trim as you like, but leave at least a little margin of white space around the image and do not cut right up to the printed area. The unprinted areas do not make a difference! You risk cutting off some of the printed area and even a tiny bit can wind up looking like the image was trimmed when pressed.

After the images are cut, then cut your fabric. I used sheets and cut a strip off of the bottom of the sheet that was a few inches wider than the image. Be as particular as you like. Because this is a learning process, I wasn’t too careful with cutting perfect edges. However, this can be kept as a reference guide, so if you want to carefully cut them, that’s up to you.

Step 5: Look Up the Press Settings

Each sublimation blank will have a recommended range of temperatures and times, as well as a suggested pressure. For example, it might say 365F -400F, 30-50 seconds, medium pressure. Or it might say 190C-204C, 30-50 seconds. It’s worth taking a bit of time before starting this project to go through the exercise of finding out what various sites say about the press settings. You might search for, “sublimation settings for polyester fabric.” Skip any AI answers — go straight to the sources. There are lots of crafter sites, sublimation printing companies, sublimation blank companies, and other resources that have good information. Go check them out and write down the what you find. Why don’t I just tell you? Because if you find a site that has information that differs from mine, you might want to test that information!

Note: Be sure you know whether your pressing in Celsius or Fahrenheit! If no scale is listed, if the number is under 300, it’s Celsius, over 300, it’s Fahrenheit.

There are SO many opinions out there, aren’t there? So this deserves a little research of our own! I decided that the temperature range I wanted to test was 365F-410F/185C-210C, for 30-60 seconds. Pressure was a little tough for me to quantify. I have a manual, swing-away press that has a screw knob to control the pressure so I don’t have a good way of calibrating it. I used the “dollar bill” test, meaning that I put dollar bills (well, cut sheets of paper resembling the size of a dollar bill) on each side and tightened the pressure so they gave some resistance at being pulled out. If you have an automatic press, you can read your instructions for how to set it. If you have an EasyPress, I’ve read that people use hand weights, like 2-5 pounds, to put on the top so you don’t press it unevenly.

In your notebook, draw up a table. Your rows are temperatures, your columns are times — you might have two sets of columns to do a second pressure.

	Medium Pressure 15 sec	Medium Pressure 30 sec	Medium Pressure 45 sec	Medium Pressure 60 sec	Heavy Pressure 15 sec	Heavy Pressure 30 sec	Heavy Pressure 45 sec	Heavy Pressure 60 sec
340F/171C
365F/185C
375F/190C
385F/196C
395F/202C
405F/207C
420F/215C

Above is an example. Yours can differ! This particular exercise will cause you to print and press 56 images. You may not want to do that many. That’s OK — this is YOUR experiment! Fill in the variables that YOU want to test. I will say that I think it’s worthwhile to try a temperature that’s way too low or a time that’s way too short so you can see what undercooked looks like. Likewise, too hot and too long shows overcooked. You may find fairly quickly that 15 seconds is too short, so you stop testing that length of time (but bring it back for way too hot!).

Here’s the basic process of how you’ll press this:

1. Set the temperature and time on the press. Be sure the press has time to come up to temperature.
2. For your first press, put the starting edge of your strip in the press and pre-press for 10-15 seconds to remove the moisture and pre-shrink the fabric.
3. Let the fabric cool (it won’t take long!). Place a sheet of butcher paper on the bottom platen, then place the strip down, place the print face down on the fabric, tape if desired, then put a piece of butcher paper on the top. (Heavy butcher paper tends to keep the print in place.
4. Press for the desired number of seconds. (Mark this off on your chart. I lose track easy!)
5. Open the press, then carefully remove the top layer of butcher paper and the print. Try not to move the print! (Don’t worry, you’ll end up moving some and ghosting them. You’ll still be able to see the colors, though! Or repress it it’s really awful! Making mistakes is OK!)
6. WRITE DOWN THE TEMP/TIME/PRESSURE next to your newly pressed image. And admire your work. There might be nothing there or if there is, it looks awful. (Yep, it’s undercooked!) Your blacks may look a bit greenish. That’s OK.
7. Repeat steps 3-6 for each of the times at this pressure, using fresh butcher paper on the top and bottom for each press. To keep pressing on the strip, try to move the pressed images off the platen so they are not pressed again. Think of the strip like a conveyor belt!
8. Adjust the pressure and repeat steps 3-6 for the other pressures you’d like to try, if any.
9. Now increase the temperature to the temp in the next row. Give it a chance to heat to the next level. Now repeat steps 3-8 for this temperature. Repeat this sequence for all temperatures in the chart.

This is your exercise, so if you want to change the temperatures, times, or pressures midstream, either adding more or deleting some, that is completely up to you! The more you do, the more times you go through this process with setting the times, temperatures, and pressures. This helps you remember what to do and gives you a lot of confidence! You’ve undoubtedly made some mistakes and found some ghosting (double-printing) and possibly found some light area (uneven pressure). And hopefully you see some changes in how colors press. I amused my family by starting to tape strips of these images all over the walls in the rooms with good lighting to see the difference, then took them out and laid them on the driveway to see them in sunlight.

Summary

Know that each printer has individual variations in how much ink is put down or and that each press may run a little hotter or colder than the temperature it’s measuring. Even a slight variation can make a difference, which is why it’s important to get to know YOUR combination of machines! And there’s variation in timing, too. For a manual press, do you start the timer before you close it or after? Do you let it beep after the timer gets to zero, or lift it up just as it starts to beep? It really doesn’t matter — you’ll get your own rhythm that’s unique to you and that’s perfect! Develop your own rhythm and you’ll naturally adjust your time. That’s what this exercise is all about. Learning. And then finding what works for you, your equipment, and your tastes (yep, color is subjective!).

Hopefully you’ve figured out what are the best images. There can be a range. Many may look good to you, or only a few. It might be helpful to circle those in the chart above. Then that tells you that perhaps you should look at the middle of the given temperature ranges at the long end of the time frame. Or maybe it’s really hot and in the middle of the timeframe.

When you find that the next blank you try has a range of 360F-385F for 60-90 seconds at medium pressure, you’ll know that maybe you should pick 372 for 90 seconds as a first stab. When you get a new blank, start a new page in your notebook. Label it with the blank’s name, where you bought it, and maybe how much you paid for it. Then write the manufacturer’s recommended settings down (converting temperature scales if necessary). You may want to also search the internet for settings, too. Write them down. Then choose your first series of settings. Write them down. Press it. Now write down what you’d change. Need more time/temp? Need to figure out what to do about tape marks? Should you use more tape since it shifted? Did it have drawstrings that melted? Keep notes! You’ll refer back to them. If you don’t write it down, that will be the exact piece of information you’ll want to know in about 6-8 months!

Now go find a lot of projects and confidently enjoy your new hobby!